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BRIEFS 



PROPHETIC THEMES 



WITH AN INTEODUCTOKY CHAPTEE 



PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN, 



NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED. 



BRIEFS ON PROPHETIC THEMES. 

BY A MEMBER OF THE BOSTON BAR. 

Second edition, revised and enlarged. With an Mroductory Chapter 
on the Parable of the Leaven, not before published. 

Boston: E. P. BUTTON & CO. New York: HURD & HOUGHTON. 
1866. 12ino. pp. 168. 



SECOND EDITION — KEYISEI) AJTD EXLAEGED. 



BOSTON: 
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 

NEW yOKK: HURD & HOUGHTON. 

1866. 



y 




BRIEFS 



PROPHETIC THEMES 



WITH AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 



ON THE 



PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN 



NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED. 



BY A MEMBER OF THE BOSTON BAR. 



SECOND EDITION — REVISED AND ENLARGED. 



BOSTON: 



E. P, DUTTON & COMPANY, 

NEW YOKK: HURD & HOUGHTON. 






By Trarisfer 

l\iti 26 1917 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 18GC, 

By E. p. Button & Co., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



PRESS OF THE 

FRANKLIN PRINTING HOUSE, 

112 CONGRESS STREET, 

BOSTON. 



5 



QiP 



I INSCRIBE THESE PAGES, 



TOO YOUNG AS YET TO FULLY APPREHEND THEIR MEANENG, 



LN THE HOPE THAT, IN AFTER LIFE, THEIR APPEAL IN ALL MORAL 



ISSUES, SOME OF WHICH ARE HEREIN INDICATED, MAY BE 



EVER AND ONLY TO THE WORD AND PROVIDENCE 



OF THEIR HEAVENLY FATHER, AND TO 



THE GUIDANCE OF THE 



HOLY SPIRIT. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



The early demand for a second edition of this little 
volume we hail as an indication of growing interest 
in the study of the prophetic oracles. To keep pace 
with this growing interest, and to aid in giving to it a 
wid^r range and a more definite direction, we have 
carefully revised and somewhat enlarged our former 
edition, and have added to it an exposition of the Par- 
able of the Leaven, as still further illustrating the general 
course of thought pursued in the discussion of our themes. 
May God's blessing rest upon our humble labors. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Preface, 5 



Chap. I. The Parable of the Leaven, .... 9 

n. The Prophetic Earth of Daniel and the 

Revelation, 55 

m. Israel and Jerusalem of Prophecy, . .75 

rv. Literal Babylon of Prophecy, .... 107 

V. Symbolic Babylon of Prophecy, ... 127 

YI. The Antichrist of Prophecy, .... 145 



BRIEFS ON PROPHETIC THEMES 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

" Another parable spake he unto them : The kingdom of heaven is like 
unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till 
the whole was leavened." Matt. xiii. 33. 

"We question the correctness of the commonly- 
received interpretation of this parable. It appears 
to ns to refer to the growing corruptions of professing 
Christianity, and not, as is generally supposed, to 
the gradual diffusion and ultimate universal triumph 
of vital Christianity, under the present gospel dispen- 
sation. 

We invite our readers to consider with Christian 
calmness and candor the scriptural grounds upon 
which we base our view of the parable, assuring 
them in advance that in no part of our argument 
shall we depart from the sacred record, or from what 
shall appear to us to be the plainly-declared teach- 
ings of God's holy word ; our object bemg, not to 
foist upon Scripture any preconceived fancies of our 



10 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

own, but to leave it, in its beautiful simplicity and 
self-consistency, to be its own interpreter. 

We shall devote ourselves chiefly to the consider- 
ation of the word or term which gives to the parable 
its name and scriptural designation, which, as it ap- 
pears to us, determines the proper sense in which the 
whole parable is to be understood : we mean, of 
course, the word leaven. Leaven is the specific, 
comprehensive, and proverbial symbol of moral evil, 
— of the active presence and difl'usive power of 
moral corruption, — whether in the hearts of indi- 
viduals or of corporate bodies of individuals, as, for 
instance, the nation of the Jews under the Old- 
Testament dispensation, or the visible and professing 
church of Christ under the New. This view of the 
term, we think, will appear wholly correct as we 
proceed. 

It is the common belief, however, that the term is 
used in this parable as the symbol, not of evil, but 
of good ; not of the diffusive power of the native 
corruption of the unregenerate heart of man, pervad- 
ing eventually, in the natm'al coui'se of things, the 
entire heart of our common humanity, but of the 
diffusive power of that new, that superadded and 
supernatural principle of life implanted in the heart 
by regeneration, which, with the blessing of God's 
Holy Spu'it, is to end in the regeneration of all men, 
and in embracing all within the fold of the true 
church of Christ. 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 11 

It is a part of this belief that this blessed con- 
summation is to be reached within the limit of the 
present gospel dispensation, and is to constitute what 
is commonly called the millennium ; that the millen- 
nium is, according to some, to immediately precede 
the second advent of our Lord, or, according to 
others, spiritually to constitute that advent; when 
the prophecies that " all shall know the Lord from 
the least to the greatest," that " the earth shall be 
fall of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover 
the sea," shall be fulfilled. 

It is a part of this belief that the days in which 
we live are days of progressive truth and righteous- 
ness, in which the prophecy of this parable is gradu- 
ally fulfilling, and that Christian progress is to be 
more and more rapid and wide-spread to the end of 
the dispensation, when at length the gracious offers 
of the gospel will be everywhere accepted, and its 
gracious influences will everywhere prevail, or, to 
adopt the figure of the parable, according to the 
common interpretation, its righteous leaven will be 
everywhere diffused, throughout the church and 
thi'oughout the world. 

From this interpretation of the parable we dissent. 
There are difficulties in the way of accepting it, 
which to us appear insuperable. Not so did Christ 
teach ! 

If this interpretation is to be received, if vital 



12 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

Christianity is to pervade the whole earth under the 
present gospel dispensation, is to be infused into all 
nations, and. to transform human society everywhere 
into its own likeness, we are at a loss how to inter- 
pret those prophetic Scriptures which so plainly 
declare that, immediately preceding the end of this 
dispensation, there will arise and bear supreme sway 
throughout the ten allied realms of the prophetic 
earth (as designated in the second chapter of Daniel, 
and the thirteenth and seventeenth chapters of the 
Revelation)^ a ten-horned monster, which at the very 
end of the dispensation, when the hour of Israel's 
redemption and of the fulness of the " times of the 
Gentiles " shall concurrently have arrived, shall, 
together with the gathered representative hosts of his 
ten allied realms, be destroyed " without hand " (that 
is, by dii'ect supernatural interposition), and " go into 
perdition," and " be given to the burning flame ; " 
when these ten allied realms, this baseless fabric, 
this insubstantial pageant of a godless Gentile civili- 
zation, which then, as it does so largely now, shall 
them inhabit, shall dissolve, and "become as the 
chaff of summer threshing-floors." 

If this interpretation is to be received, we are at a 
loss how to reconcile with this alleged millennial era 
that is immediately to precede " the end," those not 

1 See next chapter. Prophetic Earth of Daniel and the Revelation. 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEX. 13 

less plain declarations of the prophet Daniel and of 
our Saviour, that, also immediately preceding " the 
end/' God's ancient covenant people are, under the 
persecution of Antichi'ist, of this same ten-horned 
monster, this final monarch of the Gentiles, to pass 
throuo^h a tribulation such as never was since there 

o 

was a nation, no, nor ever shall be, from which 
they will only be delivered by the second appearing 
of our Lord, by his divine interference, descending 
from the opening heavens with the armies of heaven 
following, to execute vengeance upon Israel's op- 
pressors.^ 

If this interpretation is to be received, if in that 
alleged millennial era the hearts of all men are to be 
turned to the Lord, and " the earth shall be full of the 
knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea," 
we are at a loss how to interpret those numerous 
passages of the New-Testament Scriptures which 
describe the Lord as coming " at the end of the dis- 
pensation," to destroy that wicked one ; to " render 
his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of 
fire ; " to execute vengeance upon ungodly men and 
ungodly nations; to "smite the nations in anger;" 
to " rule them with a rod of ii'on ; " to " tread them 
in the mne-press of the fierceness of the wrath 
of Almighty God ; " to purify his earthly kingdom ; 



1 See Dan. xii. 1-4. Matt. xxiv. 15-32. Rev. xix. 11-21. 
2 



14 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

to separate the sheep and the goats, the tares and 
the wheat, the unclean fishes and the clean, the fool- 
ish virgins and the wise, " the children of the king- 
dom " and " the children of the wicked one." Will 
it be said that these descriptions are figurative only ? 
What believer, as he values the salvation of a dying- 
world, dares so affirm ? \Miat sophistry of spiritual- 
ization dares adventure such presumptuous heights ? 

If this ititerpretation is to be accepted, we are at 
a loss how to mterpret the apostle Paul, when he 
tells us so expressly that " before the coming of 
the Lord " there will be a " falling away first," and 
that man of sin will be revealed, the son of perdition, 
w^ho " opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is 
called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God 
sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that 
he is God," that is, claiming divine honors ; that then 
*^ that wicked one shall be revealed, whom the Lord 
shall consume with the breath of his mouth, and 
destroy by the brightness of his appearing, even him 
whose coming is after the working of satan with all 
power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all 
deceivableness of um'ighteousness in them that per- 
ish, because they received not the love of truth that 
they might be saved. And for this cause God shall 
send them [not universal salvation, but] a strong 
delusion [a special energy of wickedness], that they 
should believe a lie ; that they all might be damned 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAYEN. 15 

who believed not tlie truth, but bad pleasure in 
unrighteousness." 2 Thes. ii. 3, 4, 8-12. Are 
these expressions of the apostle, relating to precisely 
the same period of time, figurative also ? 

If this interpretation is to be received, we are 
wholly at a loss how to interpret in general the 
Apocalyptic Scriptures, which describe with such 
fearful interest and minuteness, such vivid and thrill- 
ing horror, what are confessedly the " closing scenes" 
of the present dispensation. Rev. xiii.— xviii. 

Shall we, in the face of these plain declarations of 
Scripture, and in violation of the acknowledged im- 
port of the term leaven in all other instances of its 
use in the Scriptures, give to it in this particular in- 
stance a wholly unaccustomed signification, a signifi- 
cation the very opposite of that which, as we shall 
soon see, is by common consent given to it in every 
other instance ? 

There is in the use of language a certain natural 
method and order, a certain logical fitness and pro- 
priety, especially in the use of leading or generic 
terms, according to which, a clear and definite mean- 
ing being once attached to a given term, it always 
retains that mea^ning, unless an equally clear and 
definite reason appear for a contrary or different use 
of it. If a question arises as to the meaning of any 
term in a particular instance, its common usage or 
acceptation is to be determined by reference to the 



16 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

authorized expounders of the language or tongue in 
which the term occui's. This being determined, the 
presumption is that the common acceptation in which 
the term is understood, is the sense in which it is to 
be taken in the particular instance in question ; and, 
in the absence of countervailing evidence, such pre- 
sumption is held to be conclusive. 

To this general rule the word of God forms no 
exception. Of this reasonable presumption it is 
therefore fair to avail ourselves in the present dis- 
cussion, and as scriptural as it is fair. We claim, 
then, that the word .leaven is commonly used in the 
Scriptures in a bad sense, that in its symbolic signifi- 
cation it therein denotes moral evil, often in its worst 
and extremest forms, but always in its diffusive and 
corrupting power. We claim that the fair presump- 
tion, therefore, is that the term is to be used in its 
generally-received sense in the parable of the leaven, 
and, in the absence of countervaiHng testimony, of a 
good and sufficient reason shown to the contrai*y, we 
hold that this presumption is conclusive. 

Our first duty will be to show that the term is 
commonly used in the Scriptures in the sense rep- 
resented. 

We are aware, if we succeed in sustaining this 
presumption, that the inevitable conclusion will be, 
that, at the close of the present gospel dispensation, 
the leaven of corruption, of unrighteousness, and not 



THE PARxVBLE OF THE LEAVEN. 17 

righteousness, will have become everywhere dif- 
fused : that is, that its diffusion will constitute the 
distinguishing characteristic of this alleged millennial 
or closing period of this gospel dispensation. But 
whatever the necessary conclusion, we shall accept 
it in candor and good faith, trusting not less to the 
good faith and candor of our readers. 

Before proceeding with our argument, it is of con- 
sequence to notice certain particulars in which the 
term leaven, as used in the parable, cannot be said 
to have any just scriptural application, if taken in 
the commonly-received sense of the ultimate univer- 
sal diffusion of the gracious influences and saving 
power of the gospel. 

In the first place, it cannot apply, in the sense 
claimed, to individual believers. The fallen nature 
of man is not transformed into the divine likeness 
by the renewing power of the Holy Spirit, but a new 
principle of life is upon regeneration implanted in 
the heart. The divine grace does not claim to exer- 
cise any such pervasive, universally diffusive power 
over the old nature of the believer. His old nature, 
in his best estate, never is, never can be, in the sense 
claimed, wholly leavened. This new principle of 
life does not infuse itself into his old nature. That 
ever remains evil, and strives against the Spirit. 
His power to resist and bridle it is all the power that 
he possesses. He may come off conqueror and more 

2* 



18 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAYEN. 



than conqueror in the conflict, but never in this life 
can he escape the conflict with his fallen nature. 

What is true in this respect of one believer must 
be true of all believers. The mere aggregation of 
numbers, corporate or otherwise, can make no difler- 
ence in the principle or in the mode of its operation, 
nor reverse the principles of God's moral govern- 
ment, nor make that true of any given or supposable 
number of believers within the pale of the profess- 
ing church, or out of it, which is not and cannot be 
true of any one believer. The election of grace, the 
true church of Christ, can never, therefore, in the 
sense claimed, become wholly leavened. 

And if not the true church, certainly _ not the 
merely nominal and professing church, in which we 
are expressly taught that there always have been, 
and always will be, to " the end of the dispensation," 
a mixture of tares. and wheat ; of clean and unclean 
fishes ; of wise and foolish virgins ; of " the children 
of the kingdom " and " the children of the wicked 
one;" who, by the divine command, are to "grow 
together until the harvest, which is the end of the 
dispensation." Much less, therefore, can the merely 
nommal and professing church become, in the sense 
claimed, wholly leavened. 

Having thus adverted to those particulars in which 
the term, as used in the parable, cannot, in the sense 
claimed, be said to apply, we come now to the con- 



THE PAEABLE OF THE LEAYEX. 19 

sideration of tlie customary use and signification of 
the term as found both in the Old and New Testa- 
ment Scriptures. 

The definitions given by Webster and Worcester^ 
as they so fully include, and, indeed, directly refer 
to the scriptural signification of the term, are first to 
be considered. 

Says Webster, " Leaven is any substance that pro- 
duces, or is designed to produce, fermentation, as in 
dough ; especially, a mass of sour dough, which, 
mixed with a large quantity of dough, produces a 
fermentation in it and renders it light ; or (2) any- 
thing that makes a general, especially a corrupting 
change in the mass." 

Says Worcester, "Leaven is a substance which 
causes fermentation in that with which it is mixed ; 
particularly yeast or sour dough, used for raising 
bread ; or (2) anything which mixes with a mass and 
changes it to its own nature ; commonly used of 
something which depraves that with which it is 
mixed [as, for instance,] : ' Take heed and beware of 
the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.' 
Matt. xvi. 6." 

Calmet, Smith, and Kitto, in their dictionaries of 
the Bible, fully establish the definitions of the term 
given by Worcester and Webster. 

The first instance of the use of the term in the 
Scriptures occurs in the twelfth chapter of Exodus. 



20 THE PAEABLE OF THE LEAVEX. 

The circumstances under which it is there used 
should be carefully recalled. The twelfth chapter 
of Exodus describes the institution of the feast of 
the Passover, that feast which in sacredness and 
solemnity surpassed all others in the Jewish ritual. 
* When God brought up the children of Israel out 
of Eg}^pt, to be to him a pure people, the word of 
the Lord came to Moses and Aaron, commanding 
them to instruct the congregation of the people to 
prepare for their departure by a solemn religious 
ordinance. On the tenth day of the month Abib, 
w^hich had then commenced, the head of each family 
was to select from the flock either a lamb or a kid, a 
male of the first year, without blemish. On the 
fourteenth day of the month, at the setting of the 
sun, he was to kill the lamb, receive its blood in a 
basin, and with a sprig of hyssop sprinkle it on the 
side-posts and lintel of the door of his house. The 
lamb was then to be roasted whole, and to be eaten 
with unleavened bread. This ordinance was insti- 
tuted immediately before and in anticipation of the 
smiting of the first-born of the Egyptians, and of the 
passing-by or over of the houses of the Israelites in 
that dread night by the destroying angel. This 
ordinance, the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, aside 
even from its as yet unrevealed typical significance, 
was to be to them an " ordinance forever,'' a " me- 
morial to all generations " of this final interposition 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAYEX. 21 

of tlie clivine power for their deliverance from the 
hands of their oppressors. In commemoration of 
the pecuHar sanctity of the offering, it was to be 
eaten with unleavened bread, as the fit, consecrated, 
and perpetual symbol of purity, smcerity, and truth, 
in theii' grateful worship of their divine deliverer.* 
Of such consequence was it, however, on every ac- 
count in the divine mind, greatly on account doubt- 
less of its yet unrevealed typical significance, that the 
" paschal lamb " should be eaten with unlgavened 
bread, that this symbol should be rehgiously observed 
in connection with this feast, that whoever was known 
to eat leavened bread during the seven days of the 
Passover, or to have even the leaven of which it was 
made in his habitation, was to be cut off fi'om the 
congregation of Israel, from all participation in its 
religious privileges, from all rights of citizenship, of 
membership m any sense in the chosen nation, if 
indeed he were not, as some have supposed, to suffer 
the extreme penalty of death itself. We recite the 
command in full, leaving our readers to determine 
its proper interpretation for themselves : 

« Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread ; even the first 
day shall ye put away leaven out of your houses : for whoso- 
ever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the 
seventh day, that soul shall be cut oflF from Israel." Exod. 
xii. 15. 

" In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at 



2^ THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVE X. 

even, ye sliall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twen- 
tieth day of the month at even. Seven days shall there be 
no leaven found in your houses : for whosoever eateth that 
which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the 
congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in 
the land." Exod. xii. 18, 19. 

. " Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days : and there 
shall no leavened bread be seen with thee ; neither shall 
there be leaven seen with thee in all thy quarters." Exod. 
xiii. 7. 

Of sych vital consequence was it to observe with 
most religious fidelity this consecrated symbol of a 
pure and spotless worship, and of such iiital con- 
sequence Avas so much as the presence even, though 
in the smallest quantity, of leaven or leavened 
bread, — the symbol, conversely, of an impure and 
corrupt w^orship, — wheresoever in all the Hebrew 
quarters, durmg the seven days of the Passover ! 

Two terms are used in the Hebrew language to 
denote leaven, or leavened bread, seor and Jchametz. 
Seor, which, in the Greek or Septuagint version, is 
Iv^ii], and in the Latin or \\A^2iie, fermentum, signifies 
sourness or fermentation. Khametz signifies "fer- 
mented," or "leavened," literally "sharpened" bread. 

" That seor and khametz, the Hebrew words sig- 
nifying leaven, are synoAymous," says a learned and 
eminent expositor, " is clear from Exodus xii. 15 
[abeady cited], where they are both used of the same 
object, the only difference being that the term khametz 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAYEX. 23 

has a more general signiiicancy, so as to be applicable 
to both, kinds of fermentation, vinous and acetous." ^ 

Professor Bush, in his note on the same passage 
(Exod. xii. 15), says: "Two distinct terms are em- 
ployed to signify leaven in this verse, the former of 
which, seor, properly imports leaving or remainder, 
and is translated by Ainsworth, the most exact of 
all translators, ^ old leaven,' to which Paul alludes 
(1 Cor. V. T), ^ Pui'ge out therefore the old leaven,' 
etc. The other, khametz, is so called fi'om a word 
signifying sourness. The two terms, perhaps, have 
allusion to a two-fold species of spiritual leaven, the 
one hidden and secret, or hypocrisy (Luke xii. 1), 
the other to open malice and wickedness (1 Cor. v. 
8), or T\T.cked persons, as Da\dd (Ps. Ixxi. 4) calls 
the malicious and uniighteous man khametz, or leav- 
ener, though rendered in oui' translation ' cruel man.' 
Thus, also, Ps. Ixxiii. 21 terms the heart infected 
with error and filled with vexation, ' leavened,' 
although one version has ^ grieved.' " 

The Greek word 'Qvf^ri, corresponding to the Hebrew 
seor, Dr. Pobinson defines, in its metaphorical or 
symbolic sense, as " anything which tends to cor- 
rupt and pervert any one, e.g. false doctrines, im- 
proper conduct, etc. Thus, ^ a little leaven leavens 

1 See Kitto's Biblical Cyclopaedia. Third edition. Edited by Dr. W. L. 
Alexander. Philadelphia ; Lippincott & Co. A.D. 1865. Article. Leaven, 
by the editor. 



24r THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

the whole lump/ a proverbial expression signifying 
that a few bad men may be the means of seducing 
many into error and guilt, etc." 

The corresponding Latin word, fermentum, is ap- 
plied by the Latin writers, — as, for instance, Tacitus 
and Prudentius, — to the manners and conduct of the 
people, as being corrupted and bad. 

Dr. Adam Clarke, commenting upon the passage 
which we have cited from the twelfth of Exodus, 
says : " Leaven itself is a species of corruption, being 
produced by fermentation, which in such cases tends 
to putrefaction." 

So also Scott, on the same passage : " Leaven is 
the known emblem of hypocrisy, malice, and wicked- 
ness : unleavened bread was, therefore, the represen- 
tation of sincerity, truth, and love ; unleavened bread 
was a shadow of the holy life of the true believer, 
who, by the grace of Christ, through faith in his 
atonement, puts away the old leaven of sin with 
abhorrence, and walks with God in newness of life." 

Dr. Alexander, whose article on " leaven " in Kit- 
to's new cyclopaedia we have already referred to, is 
still more to the point. In the same article he fur- 
ther says, " The process of fermentation is one simply 
of corruption. It was probably on this account that 
fermented bread was forbidden to be used in the 
Passover, and that all leaven was to be purged out 
of the house of the Israelites Jfor the seven days of 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. ^5 

tliat festival (Exod. xii.-xv., et seq.), and that in all 
offerings made by fire unto the Lord unleavened bread 
alone was to be used (Lev. ii. 4, 11; vii. 12; viii. 2; 
Numb. vi. 15). As all corruption implies impurity, 
it was not fitting that anything in which corruption 
was going on should be presented to the Lord or 
before him ; and as Israel had been delivered out of 
Egypt that they might be a pure people unto the 
Lord, it was proper that in celebrating that event 
they should put away from their houses whatever 
was a symbol of corruption. For the same reason 
honey was prohibited to be offered unto the Lord, 
because [when mixed with dough or paste] of its 
tendency to ferment." 

We cite as our last authority for the meaning of 
the word leaven, and of the term leavened bread as 
used, not in these passages in Exodus only, but 
wherever used in connection with offerings made to 
the Lord by fu^e, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, ar- 
ticle, leaven. In connection with the use of leaven, 
" the most prominent idea and the one which applies 
equally to all cases of prohibition, is connected with 
the corruption which leaven itself had undergone, 
and which it communicated to bread in the process 
of fermentation. It was to this property of the 
leaven that our Saviour points when he speaks of the 
leaven (i.e. the corrupt doctrine) of the Pharisees 
and the Sadducees (Matt. xvi. 6) ; and St. Paul, 



26 THE PAEABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

when lie speaks of the ^ old leaven ' (1 Cor. 
V. 7)." 

Leaven, as a symbol of impurity and corruption, 
was not peculiar to the Jews, but extended to other 
nations. The Romans forbade the priest of Jupiter 
to touch floui' mixed with leaven. Their word fer- 
meiitum, already mentioned, often signifies corruption. 
*' The leaven itself," says Plutarch, '' is born from 
corruption, and corrupts the mass with which it is 
mixed." 

With this weight of authority before us, we do not 
see how there can be any question as to the meaning 
of the term, whether taken in its literal or rts sym- 
bolic and metaphorical sense, in the Old-Testament 
Scriptures, especially when used in connection with 
sacrifices made by fire. We will, however, briefly 
advert to the circumstances and connection in which 
it is used in other instances in the Old Testament. 

It is next used on the occuiTcnce of the fii'st anni- 
versary of the deliverance of the children of Israel 
out of Egypt, and of the mstitution of the Passover : 

" And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day in 
which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; 
for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this 
place: there shall no leavened bread be eaten. Seven days 
thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall 
be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten 
seven days ; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 21 

thee, neither shcall there be leaven seen with thee in all thy 
quarters." Exod. xiii. 3, 6, 7. 

This Scripture may be passed without further 
comment than to note that it is simply a reaffirmation 
of the original commandment instituting the Passover, 
founded in precisely the same reasons, and for pre- 
cisely the same purpose; that is, primarily commemo- 
ratinof the deliverance of the children of Israel out of 
Egypt, but typically (though not as yet declara- 
tively) looking forward to the atoning sacrifice of 
Christ, the Lamb of God. The second command- 
ment is expressed in terms fully as explicit and imper- 
ative as the first, and the obligation of the children 
of Israel to observe this memorial of their deliv- 
erance out of Egypt, in all its precise and rigid 
requirements, mth even purer worship and more 
grateful homage than the year before, is clearly evi- 
dent ; for had not God led them through this first 
year of their perilous homeward wandering, with 
many gracious providences and many mii'aculous 
interpositions in theii' behalf? 

The next and third use of the word leaven in the 
Old Testament, occurs in the thirty-fourth chapter 
of Exodus. 

Moses, having destroyed the two tables of stone and 
the golden calf, and inflicted a terrible chastisement 
upon the people for their idolatry during his absence 



28 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

from tliem upon Mount Sinai, by divine command 
went up into the mountain the second time, bearing 
in his hand two new tables of stone. God, being 
entreated of him, renewed his covenant with Israel, 
writing again with his own finger upon the new tables 
the ten commandments which he had written upon 
the former tables, broken in pieces by Moses, in his 
righteous anger with the people, at the foot of the 
mountain. 

To this renewed covenant of the ten command- 
ments, God added certain supplementary precepts, 
forming, however, a part of the same covenant, 
which precepts were inscribed by Moses upon the 
reverse sides of the tables, the whole constituting 
from that time forward the most sacred and precious 
treasure the ark of the covenant contained. 

First in order, in these supplementary precepts of 
the new covenant, was the command to Israel to 
*^ make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land 
whither they were going," together with a specifica- 
tion of the reasons why they should not. 

Second in order, was the command to " make 
themselves no molten gods." 

Third in order, this command : " The feast of 
unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou 
shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee in 
the time of the month Abib ; for in the month Abib 
thou earnest out from Egypt." Exod. xxxiv. 18. 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 29 

To mark the jealous tenacity with which God 
insisted upon the strict observance of this latter com- 
mand, and as if it could not be too often repeated, 
he directly after adds, " Thou shalt not offer the 
blood of my sacrifice [i.e. the paschal lamb] with 
leaven." Exod. xxxiv. 25. 

We read that the face of Moses, when he descended 
from the mountain after this second interview with 
Jehovah, mth the two tables of testimony in his 
hand, shone with celestial radiance, so that he was 
obliged to veil it in the presence of the people. Was 
this celestial radiance but the reflection of that pre- 
ternatural splendor in which Jehovah had revealed 
himself to him in the cloud ; or was it, in a meas- 
ure, the hope beating warmly at his heart and beam- 
ing with heavenly lustre in his face, that hitherto 
unfaithful Israel would prove unfaithful no more, but 
henceforward worship God in purity and truth, 
becoming, as it were, unleavened bread before 
him ? And wilt thou not, O Israel, consider ? 
wilt thou not be moved by the prevailmg intercessions 
of thy faithful and devoted leader ? wilt thou resist 
alike the persuasions of the divine mercy, and the 
threatenings of the divine wrath ? wilt thou persist 
in thy evil courses, and prefer the symbol of an im- 
pure and corrupt and idolatrous worship, the worship 
of molten gods, to this simple symbol of a pure 
and loving worship, the worship of the only living 

3* 



30 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

and true God ? wilt thou " transgress at Bethel and 
multiply transgression at Gilgal," and " offer thy 
sacrifices of thanksgiving with leaven," "become a 
sinful nation," "a people laden with iniquity," "a 
seed of evil-doers, children that are corrupters," 
'^ provoking the Holy One of Israel unto anger," and 
" go away backward ? " But Israel did not consider. 
" The ox knoweth his OAvner, and the ass his master's 
crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not 
consider." 

The next and fourth instance of the use of the 
word in the Old Testament, is in the second chapter 
of Leviticus : 

" No meat-offering, which ye shall bring unto the Lord, 
shall be made with leaven, for ye shall burn no leaven, nor 
any honey, in any offering flf the Lord made by fire." Lev. 
ii. 11. 

In connection with this command we cite the spe- 
cial commandment concerning the meat-offering of 
Aaron and his sons, which brings us to the fifth and 
sixth instances of the Old-Testament use of the 
term : 

" And this is the law of the meat-offering : the sons of 
Aaron shall offer it before the Lord, before the altar. And 
he shall take of it his handful of the flour of the meat-offer- 
ing, and of the oil thereof, and all the frankincense which is 
upon the meat-offering, and shall burn it upon the altar for a 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 31 

sweet-savour, even the memorial of it, unto the Lord, and the 
remainder thereof shall Aaron and his sons eat ; with unleav- 
ened bread shall it be eaten in the holy place ; in the court 
of the tabernacle of the congregation shall they eat it. It 
shall not be eaten with leaven. I have given it unto them for 
their portion of my offerings m,ade by fire ; it is most holy, 
as is the sin-offering, and as the trespass-offering." Lev. vi. 
14-17. 

" And Moses spake unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar, and 
unto Ithamar, his sons that were left, Take the meat-offering 
that remaineth of the offering of the Lord made by fire, and 
eat it without leaven beside the altar ; for it is most holy." 
Lev. X. 12. 



Here the holiness of the offering is expressly de- 
clared to be the reason why it should be eaten with 
unleavened bread. It w^ould seem that the divine 
love never wearied in seeking to impress upon the 
obdurate heart of Israel the sanctity of the symbol. 

In the instances already considered, the only in- 
stances thus far in which the term is used in the Old 
Testament, we have seen that leaven is the invaria- 
ble symbol of moral impurity and corruption, to the 
use of which, to the presence of which, even, where- 
soever in all the Hebrew quarters, during the seven 
days of their most solemn annual festival, was at- 
tached the penalty, if not of death itself, yet of per- 
petual excision from the household of Israel. Or, 
in other words, we have considered it in connection 
with those offerings which typified the atoning sacri- 



S2 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

fice of Christ, in which offerings, since in " Christ 
our Passover " there was no sin, unleavened bread 
only, the symbol of the piu:e love of an undivided 
heart, could be used. 

And here, to pause a moment, the conclusion is as 
logical as it is scriptural, that the symbol of unleav- 
ened bread may, in a certain sense, justly be regarded 
as the corner-stone of the Jewish theocracy, inas- 
much as it was the fundamental and sovereign test of 
the national fealty of the Hebrews to their divine 
ruler, the one only living and true God. 

The instance in which we come now to consider 
the use of the term, the seventh in order, and last 
in which it is used in connection with the Mosaic 
ritual, is that of the two flour loaves, which were an 
offering of thanksgiving for the first fruits of the 
wheat harvest ; an offering, in a typical sense, of 
no sacrificial significance whatever, — a thank-offer- 
ing only : 

" Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave-loaves of 
two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be 
baken with leaven ; they are the first fruits unto the Lord." 
Lev. xxiii. 17. 

This is the only instance, out of the eight in which 
the term is used in the Old Testament, in which it 
is not used in an evil and odious sense, as the pro- 
verbially recognized symbol of moral corruption. 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. o6 

Aud here it is not used in an opposite or contradic- 
tory sense, in a sense at variance with its common 
use, but in its literal, and, in respect to its meta- 
phorical or symbolic signification, a purely negative 
sense, as being simply a fit and appropriate emblem 
of thanksgiving for one of the principal staples of 
their daily food : not a sacrificial type, or with any 
sacrificial reference whatever. The common usage of 
the term is in no wise impaired or affected thereby, 
but, together with whatever presumption may thus 
far properly be raised upon it, remains the same. 

But perverse and stiff-necked Israel would not 
consider. The molten gods of Dan and Bethel 
and Gilgal, and the golden calves of Beersheba, the 
symbols of a corrupt and impure worship, possessed 
a greater charm in the sight of degenerate Israel than 
the pui'e and holy rites and precious types and con- 
secrated symbols of the altar of the only living 
and true God, till at length Israel became wholly 
leavened with the leaven of ungodliness and idolatry, 
in all its corrupting and diffusive power. Heaven's 
judgments hung thickly over them. The black 
and portentous cloud of an overwhelming Assyrian 
invasion, sweeping before its destructive march and 
desolating fury alike the altars, the sacred vessels, 
and holy temple of the true God, and the graven 
images of their false gods, and carrying away great 
multitudes of their people into a bitterer than Egyp- 



34 THE PARABLE OF THE LEATEX. 

tian servitude, was about to burst upon their guilty 
and devoted heads. The frequent and solemn repe- 
titions of the commandment concerning unleavened 
bread, the affectionate entreaties and fearful warnings 
of the latter-day prophets, were all unheeded. Their 
deliverance out of Egypt, the paschal lamb with 
its consecrated unleavened bread, in their present 
idolatrous infatuation and blind defiance of almighty 
power, Avere all forgotten. The crumbling walls of 
a forfeited theocracy were everywhere sinking to 
dishonored dust around them. Already the hovering 
cherubim with their heavenly chariot awaited over 
the doomed city of Jerusalem the return to heaven 
of the personal divine glory from Israel, of that 
glory which was no less than the second person of 
the godhead, the angel Jehovah, the Yahvch Christ, 
the revealer and declarer of the invisible supreme 
deity, the messenger of the covenant ; which had 
called Abraham out of Chaldea ; stayed his sacri- 
ficial hand from his only son on Mount Moriah ; 
walked with him and enjoyed the shelter and partook 
of the hospitality of his tent at Mamre ; was entreated 
of him before the doomed cities of Sodom and 
Gomorrah ; wrestled with Jacob at Penuil ; ap- 
peared to Moses in the burning bush ; passed over 
the houses of the first-born of Israel in wicked Egypt ; 
parted the waters of the Red Sea, and was to fleeing 
Israel a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 35 

by clay; allayed tlieir hunger with manna from the 
skies, and theu- thirst with water from the rock ; was 
revealed to Moses in Mount Sinai ; twice wrote the 
ten commandments upon the tables of stone ; which, 
when Israel, forsaking the true God, made and wor- 
shipped in his stead a golden calf, was entreated of 
and prevailed with by Moses ; which " talked with 
Moses face to face, as a man talketh with a friend ; " 
which, when the ten commandments were renewed, 
upon the second ascension of Moses into the moun- 
tain, commanded with an added commandment the 
faithful observance by Israel of the sacred and 
neglected symbol of unleavened bread, and especially 
that the blood of his sacrifice (of the paschal lamb) 
should not be eaten with leaven ; which had gone 
with them and whose heart had melted over them in 
all their devious and sinful wandering ; which, with 
the tender persuasion of a love that was divine, 
strove gently to allure them from their strange gods, 
from the unconsecrated symbols of their idolatries, 
to the worship of himself, who was the great anti- 
type of the paschal lamb and of all the Jewish 
offerings made by fire ; who was soon to appear 
again and eventually to reign thenceforth evermore 
as their millennial king, " upon the throne of his 
father David ; " — yes, the hovering cherubim still 
lingered over the beloved but devoted city, if so be 
the children of Israel might relent, and the brooding 



36 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

vengeance of the coming storm be averted ; — 
and when they returned, alas ! this personal divine 
glory returned to heaven with them. Nothing — 
neither the memory of mercies past nor the prophetic 
vision of glories to come — availed to meet or reach, 
even, the icy coldness and stony hardness of the 
wholly leavened heart of apostate Israel. The bitter 
irony and scathing derision of the prophet Amos, 
forsaking his sycamores and flocks at Tekoah to 
shout in their ears a last warning before they rushed 
upon their self-sought destruction, was as unheeded 
and unrespcctcd as the idle wind. " Come to Bethel 
and transgress ; at Gilgal multiply transgression, and 
bring yom* sacrifices every morning and your tithes 
after three years ; and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiv- 
ing with leaven " (Amos iv. 4, 5) ; that is, burn a 
thank-offering with leaven, in contempt of the law. 
Lev. V. 11, 12, 13. Thus leavened Israel fell. 

With this last allusion to the evil term, which is 
our theme, we close the Old-Testament record con- 
cerning it. 

Du'cctly Christ appeared to Israel again, again to 
be rejected, whether as their king or as their long- 
suff'ering and compassionate Saviour, whether as the 
Son of God or as the Son of man. He came as .their 
deliverer still. It was the same ^ngel Jehovah, the 
same Yahveh Chi'ist who had delivered them out of 
Egypt, and led them through the wilderness. It 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 37 

was the same divine commissioner, the same great 
high priest, who had promulgated from Sinai their 
lofty code of ethics, established their ritual, appointed 
and consecrated their priesthood, and banished from 
their sacrificial offerings the despicable symbol of a cor- 
rupt and impure worship. Though differently man- 
ifested, it was the same " word of the Lord " which 
so often had spoken to them, now in anger and now 
in sorrow, now in love and now in wrath ; which 
appeared to the faithfal fathers of their race, to the 
mighty fi'amer of their nationality, to the not less 
mighty architect of the lofty fortunes of their early 
kingly era, and to their* rapt prophets ; the same in 
reality, though not in semblance and manifestation. 
His name was the holy child Jesus, the Christ of 
God, " Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the 
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." He came 
to Israel again, and would fain have manifested his 
divine glory with even greater might and splendor 
than before ; but leavened, wholly leavened Israel 
refused to receive him. " He came to his own and 
his own received him not." Gathering a little band 
of poor but faithful disciples around him, with the 
sad tale of Israel's woe, both past and to come, be- 
fore his all-seeing eye, and with a telling instance 
of the corrupt and corrupting doctrines of the Phar- 
isees and the Sadducees, and of their wicked self- 
righteousness, freshly in his mind, he warned his 



25» THE PARABLE OF THE LEAYEN. 

disciples^ among his very first words of instruction 
to them — as if, indeed, the opprobrious symbol had, 
with the abolition of the INIosaic ritual, only derived 
a new intensity of opprobrium — to " Take heed 
and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the 
Sadducees." And wherefore not intenser oppro- 
brium ? Was not he who uttered the warning, 
though in the eye of the world only a lowly Naza- 
rene, of lowliest birth, born in a manger, Joseph 
the carpenter's sbn, yet was he not the same divine 
and august being who had so often displayed him- 
self to fallen Israel in imearthly splendor in the past, 
and were not Phariseeism and Sadduceeism, with their 
unrighteous self-gloiying, the ripened product of that 
leaven which had corrupted Israel and caused her 
downfall, and Avas the danger any less imminent in 
the future than it had been in the past ? Had not 
those conceited Pharisees and Sadducees just assailed 
him on the coasts of Galilee, at Magdala, requmng 
of him with- derisive scorn a sign that he was the 
Messiah ; and were not Peter and James and John 
and the other disciples in danger from the subtle 
poison, that he should so solemnly have charged 
them to "Take heed 'and beware of the leaven of 
the Pharisees and of the Sadducees " ? Were ever 
words of warning better timed ? Fell ever a more 
opprobrious term from those holy lips ? 

But as this is the first instance of the use of t\e 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEX. 39 

word in the New Testament, and especially as it 
was uttered by Chi-ist himself, it is proper to con- 
sider it somewhat at length, as we did the first 
instance of its use in the Old Testament. Our own 
opinion of the word, as here used, sufficiently ap- 
pears ; we therefore cite the opinions of a few of 
our most popular and highly-esteemed commentators. 

Says Clarke, commenting on this passage : " Bad 
doctrines act in the soul as leaven does in bread ; 
they assimilate the whole spirit to their own nature. 
Pride, hypocrisy, and worldly-mindedness, which 
constituted the leaven of the Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees, ruin the major part of the world." 

Says Scott, in loco : '' Jesus, with reference to 
what had lately passed, warned his disciples most 
cautiously to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees 
and of the Sadducees and Herodians fMark ^dii. 15), 
meaning their hypocrisy, infidelity, corrupt doctrine, 
vain traditions, and proud enmity against the truth, 
which soured and corrupted all they did." 

Says Pyle, in loco : " To whom w^as this warning 
addressed? To the twelve apostles, to the first 
ministers of the church of Christ. Against what 
did our Lord warn his apostles ? Against the ' doc- 
trine ' of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. The 
Pharisees, we are frequently told in the gospels, were 
self-righteous formalists. The Sadducees were scep- 
tics, free-thinkers, and half infidels, yet Peter, James, 
and John, must beware of their doctrines." 



40 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

" Let US remember this saying of our Lord's about 
^ the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees ' 
was intended for all time. It was not meant for the 
generation only to which it was spoken. It was 
meant for the perpetual benefit of the church of 
Christ. He who spake it saw with prophetical eye 
the futui'e history of Christianity. The great Phy- 
sician knew well that Pharisee-doctrines and Sad- 
ducee- doctrines would prove the two great wasting 
diseases of his chuixh until the end of the world. 
He would have us know that there will always be 
Pharisees and Sadducees in the ranks of Christians. 
Their succession shall never fail. Their generation 
shall never become extinct. Their name may change, 
but their spirit will always remain. Therefore he 
cries to us, ' Take heed and beware.' " ^ 

Just before this admonition to his disciples, Jesus 
had taught the multitude on the sea-side at Galilee, 
by certain parables, that throughout the present 
gospel dispensation and at its end, there would be 
in his professing church a mixture of tares and 
wheat, which tares must " grow together with the 
wheat until the harvest, which was the end of the 
dispensation" (afwroc). • 

Now, tares symbolically are a leavening element 
of great power, for by the law of their nature, they 



1 Expository Thoughts on the Gospels. By Rev. J. C. Ryle, B.A., 
Christ Church, Oxford. New York: Carter & Brothers. 1866. 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEX. 41 

ever continue to increase more rapidly than tlie 
wheat, until the time of the harvest. 

Jesus also taught them, by another parable, that 
the professing church in this dispensation was " like 
unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered 
of every kind : which, when it was full, they drew 
to the shore, and sat do^vn, and gathered the good 
into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be 
at the end of the dispensation Qdojvo; again) ; the 
angels shall come forth, and gather the wicked from 
among the just." Matt. xiii. 47-49. 

Now, unclean or putrid fishes are a not less befit- 
ting illustration of the leavening element than tares, 
their characteristic tendency, like that of leaven, 
being to the putrefaction of the whole mass. 

Midway between these two parables, indissolubly 
linked with both, borrowing a reflected light from 
both to aid us in its interpretation, a part of the 
same connected series, and of the same solemn les- 
son, stands the parable of the leaven. Our only 
comment in passing is, that it was spoken by Jesus, 
by liim whose glorious presence had accompanied 
erring Israel from the first ; whose all-seeing eye, 
discerning the end firom the beginning, compre- 
hended at a glance the whole rounded futiu'e of Is- 
rael's abasement and shame ; and yet he spoke it 
without a word of qualification, as if he expected or 
intended that it would be understood in any other 
than its ordinary and proverbial sense. 

4* 



42 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

The term is used in but two instances more in 
the holy Scriptures ; in both by the apostle Paul, 
once in his first epistle to the Corinthians, and once 
in his epistle to the Galatians. Let us note particu- 
larly the sense which he attaches to it, for his under- 
standing of the term and that of his brother-apostles 
was manifestly the same. 

The church at Corinth had to a larsre extent re- 

o 

lapsed into those sins of impurity, profligacy, and 
licentiousness, which they had practised in the days 
of their heathenism, and which had disgraced their 
native city, even among the heathen making it a 
proverb for vice and wantonness, so much so that 
the very word Corinthianize signified to play the 
wanton. A crime recently committed by a member 
of the Corinthian church was now reported to St. 
Paul, and excited his utmost abhorrence. A member 
of that church was openly living in incestuous inter- 
course with his step-mother, and that during his 
father's life ; yet this audacious offender was not 
excluded from the church. 

Moreover, members of this church were turning 
ev^en the spiritual gifts which they had professed to 
receive from the Holy Spirit, into occasions of vanity 
and display. The decent order of Christian worship 
was disturbed by the tumultuary claims of rival 
ministrations. Women had forgotten the modesty 
of their sex, and came forward unveiled — contrary 



THE PAUABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 4o 

to the custom of tlieii* country — to address tlie 
public assembly ; and even the sanctity of the holy 
communion itself was profaned by scenes of revelling 
and debauch. 

These things came speedily to the apostle's knowl- 
edge. Hence his epistle : 

" It is reported commonly that there is fornication among 
you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among 
the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And ye 
are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that 
hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. 
For I verily, as absent in body but present in spirit, have 
judged already, as though I were present, concerning him 
that hath so done this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with 
the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such a one 
unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit 
may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. 

" Your glorying [this sinful display of your professed 
Christian graces] is not good. Know ye not that a little 
leaven leaveneth the whole lump. Purge out therefore the 
old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. 
For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore 
let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the 
leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened 
hand of sincerity and truth." 1 Cor. v. 1-8. 

This passage shows us that Paul attached precisely 
the same meaning to the term which was attached 
to it under the Old -Testament dispensation ; indeed, 
that leaven was still, as it had always been, the 



44 THE PAUABLE OF THE LEAVEX. 

acknowledged and proverbial symbol of a corrupt 
and evil heart, whether the heart of one only or the 
hearts of many. 

Dr. Barnes, commenting on this passage, says : 
" A little leaven, etc. This is evidently a proverbial 
saying. It occurs also in Galatians v. 9. A similar 
figure also occurs in the Greek classic writers. By 
leaven the Hebrews metaphorically understood what- 
ever had the power of corrupting, whether example, 
or doctrine, or anything else. The sense here is 
plain. A single sin indulged in, or allowed in the 
church, would act like leaven, — it would pervade and 
corrupt the whole church unless it was removed." 

It seems to us that self-glorying, the vain display 
of their pretended Christian graces, was quite as 
much the leaven here intended as the fornication. 

Again, and finally, when the epistle to the Gala- 
tians was written, the church of Galatia consisted 
mostly of Gentile Christians. There were, however, 
a few Jewish converts among them. The latter 
afforded a natural fulcrum for the efforts of Juda- 
izing missionaries from Palestine, and through this 
branch of the little flock the church at large fell an 
easy prey to the evil persuasions of these emissaries, 
who resolved at any cost to. loosen the hold of the 
apostle upon the affection and respect of the Gala- 
tian converts. They succeeded in alienating many 
of the Galatian Christians fi'om their father in the 
faith, and in persuading many of the recent converts 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 45 

to submit to the rite of circumcision^ and to embrace 
their new teachers with the same zeal which they 
had formerly shown for the apostles, and the rest of 
the church was thi'own into a state of agitation and 
division. 

Now, Paul cherished for his Galatian converts a 
peculiar affection, and their love and zeal for him 
had been smgularly conspicuous. Accordingly, has- 
tenino' to check the evil before it should become 

o 

irremediable, he writes to the Galatians an epistle, 
which commences with an abruptness and severity 
that mark the apostle's sense of the urgency of the 
occasion, and the imminence of the danger that 
threatened them. 

" O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you ? 
Ye did run well [ye once had the faith that worked 
by love ; were genuine, active, useful Christians] ; 
who did hinder you that ye should not obey the 
truth [who prevented you from continuing to obey 
the truth ? Ye could only be turned aside by your 
own consent] ? This persuasion [of the necessity of 
your being circumcised and obeying the law of Mo- 
ses] Cometh not of him that calleth you. A little 
leaven leaveneth the whole lump." 

Nor was leaven, with its corrupting and diffusive 
power, confined to the Corinthian and Galatian 
churches. Paul's epistles to all the chuixhes were 
full of most impressive warnings to take heed and 



46 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAYEX. 

beware of its insidious approacli and its fatal power. 
False professors and corrupting teachers abounded, 
and would continue to abound. He warned the 
Ephesians to be "no more children, tossed to and 
fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by 
the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby 
they lie in wait to deceive." He Avarned the Philip- 
pians that there were in their midst " enemies of 
the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose 
God is their belly, and whose glory is in their 
shame." He warned the Colossians, as he did the 
Corinthians, of the leaven of legality and its conse- 
quent superstitions. He warned the Thessalonians 
that there were those among them who " walked 
disorderly, not working at all," and that the " mys- 
tery of iniquity " was at work among them, and 
would " continue to work " till the " coming of the 
Lord." So fearful had been the corrupting inroad 
of leaven among the churches in Asia, that he sadly 
wrote to Timothy, " This thou knowest, that all they 
which are in Asia are turned away from me." 

Mark the rebuke of John to those seven recreant 
churches of Asia, for theu' "wordliness in w^hich 
they even gloried;" their "first love forsaken;" 
their " first works given up ; " their " garments de- 
filed ; " their " lukewarmness " (" neither hot nor 
cold ") ; their " tolerance of heresy." Mark the sense 
entertained by Jude of the danger of the subtle 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEX. 47 

entrance, and diffusive and corrupting power of the 
leaven of wordliness and hypocrisy in the chuixh at 
large. lu a general epistle addressed to all the 
churches, taking up Paul's melancholy and prophetic 
note of waming, he thus seeks to arouse to a sense 
of theii- danger, the whole body of the early Chris- 
tian chiuxh : 

"For there are certain men crept in unawares 
[the woman " hid " the leaven in the meal!], imgod- 
ly men, turning the grace of our God into lascivious- 
ness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord 
Jesus Christ; filthy dreamers defiling the flesh, 
despising dominion, speaking evil of dignities; spots 
in your feasts of charity, — when they feed with 
you, feeding themselves without fear ; clouds with- 
out^ water, carried about of winds ; trees whose fruit 
withereth, without fi'uit, twice dead, plucked up 
by the roots ; raging waves of the sea, foaming out 
their own shame ; wandering stars, to whom is re- 
served the blackness of darkness forever." 

And Jude forewarned the chuixhes, in order that 
true behevers therein might be awakened to a quick- 
ened sense of the surrounding danger, and of the 
necessity of working out their salvation with, fear 
and trembling, that these corrupt and leavening 
tendencies would continue to exist in the church 
to the end of the dispensation, till the " coming of 
the Lord," who would come for the declared pur-pose 
of putting an end to them. 



48 THE PAHABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

Peter, also, in his general epistles to all the 
churches, says, with similar prephetic emphasis, 
" There shall be false teachers among you, who 
privily [the "hidden" leaven again!] shall bi'ing 
in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that 
bought them, and bring upon themselves swift 
destruction ; and many shall follow their pernicious 
ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be 
evil spoken of; and, through covetousness, shall 
they with feigned words make merchandise of you, 
whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, 
and their damnation slumbereth not ; they shall 
utterly perish in their own corruption, and shall 
receive the reward of unrighteousness ; they are 
cursed children who have forsaken the right way, 
to Avhom the mist of darkness is reserved forever." 

Thus closes the Scripture record of this evil 
symbol (unless forsooth the parable of the leaven 
constitutes the one only exception), the record of 
its common usage and undisputed acceptation. It 
stands alone, without a peer, in its lofty preeminence 
of evil, as the symbol of all that is corrupt and im- 
piu-e in the worship of a pure and holy God. There 
is no form of spiritual evil that may not be fitly 
represented by it, that could be more fitly repre- 
sented by any other. 

Wherefore, we maintain that, in the absence of 
countervailing evidence, the presumption is not only 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVER. 49 

raised but fairly established, that the usual scripture 
import of the term is its proper import in the parable 
before us. There is nothing on the face of the para- 
ble, nothing in the form of its expression, to denote 
that it is here to be taken in any other than its 
accustomed sense, much less in a directly opposite 
sense ; that a term which m sixteen out of seventeen 
instances of its use in the holy Scriptures (not count- 
ing it in this parable one) is used metaphorically, 
as the symbol of evil, and evil only, is here to be 
used as the symbol of good, and good only. Such 
an assumption is wholly gratuitous and unreasonable. 
It is an assumption only, as unscriptural as it is 
illogical, however comfortable and soothing may be 
the dream. 

Having established the presumption that the com- 
mon scripture meaning of the term is its meaning 
here, our argument properly ends. 

We cannot refrain, however, in closing, fi:om 
pointing out to those who hold an opposite interpre- 
tation of the term in this parable, a difficulty lying 
in their way which it is not possible to escape, nor, as 
it seems to us, to surmount. There is not in point 
ol fact to be, at the close of this dispensation, any 
such universal diffusion of the gracious influences and 
saving power of vital Christianity, as their interpreta- 
tion requu'es. Nothing is more clearly revealed than 
that it will be as true of the closing as of any period 



50 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

of the dispensation, that " wide is the gate and broad 
is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many 
there be which go in thereat ; because straight is the 
gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, 
and few there be that find it." Else were not the 
teachings of Christ prophetic. Christ teaches us ex- 
pressly that at the end of the dispensation there will 
be in his professing church tares as well as wheat, 
unclean fishes as well as clean, foolish virgins as 
well as wise, wicked husbandmen, unfaithful as 
well as faithful servants ; those who will be shut 
out from his marriage supper ; that " many are 
called but few are chosen ; " that he, that same Jesus 
whom the men of Galilee saw taken up from them 
into heaven, shall so come in like manner as they 
saw him go into heaven, only that when he comes 
again it will be with us of this dispensation as it was 
in the days of Noah, when the " flood came and took 
them all away ; " that he will come, with the armies 
of heaven following, to "smite the nations and rule 
them with a rod of iron, and tread them in the wine- 
press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God ; " 
to " consume with the breath of his mouth and de- 
stroy by the brightness of his coming, that wicked 
one, then to be revealed ; " to bring to theu* com- 
pleted fulness the times of the Gentiles, and lift 
up do^\Ti - trodden Israel, and cause her to dwell 
safely on the high places of Jacob, amid her an- 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 51 

clent vines and fig-trees, her olives and her palms ; 
to " execute judgment upon all, and to convince all 
that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly 
deeds which they have ungodly committed." " When 
ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, 
spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy 
place (whoso readeth, let him understand) ; . . . 
then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since 
the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever 
shall be. And except those days should be short- 
ened, there should no flesh be saved ; but for the 
elect's sake [for the sake, not of the professing 
church, but for the elect's sake] those days shall be 
shortened. . . . Immediately after the tribu- 
lation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and 
the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall 
fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven shall be 
shaken ; and then shall appear the sign of the Son 
of man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the 
earth moui-n [why mourn, if the gracious influences 
of the gospel are then to be everywhere difiused ?]. 
And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a 
trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect [not 
the professing church] from the four wuids, from one 
end of heaven to the other." 

'Wlierefore it seems that a discrimination is then 
to be made between men, between the elect and the 
non-elect, and that the election or non-election of 



52 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

grace is to be the only ground of discrimination, 
whether men may be in Christ's visible earthly king- 
dom or out of it. And yet those who seek to maintain 
the opposite interpretation of the parable, contend 
that this same closing era of the dispensation is to 
be a blissful millennial era, notwithstanding all this 
weight of Scripture against the unwarranted assump- 
tion. If they are right and we are wrong, why does 
Christ come to vindicate his faithful followers ; to 
execute judgment upon the ungodly ; to smite 
the nations ; to rule them with a rod of iron ; to 
"tread them in the wine-press of the fierceness and 
wrath of Almighty God " ? Why did Jude fore- 
warn the church universal that there would be 
" mockers in the last time, who should walk after 
their own ungodly lusts " ? "WTiy did Paul write to 
to Timothy, " This know, also, that in the last days 
perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers 
of theii' own selves, boasters, proud, blasphemous, 
. . . incontinent, fierce, heady, high-minded, lov- 
ers of pleasure more than lovers of God ; having a 
form of godliness [i.e. professing to lead a godly life], 
but denying the power thereof" ? Why, in a previ- 
ous epistle, did he write to Timothy, " Now the Spirit 
speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some 
shall depart from the faith ; giving heed to seducing 
spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hy- 
pocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 53 

iron," etc. ? . Why did he predict, in his second 
epistle to the Thessalonians, as a sign why they need 
not then trouble themselves about the second com- 
ing of the Lord, that a wide- spread apostasy and the 
revelation of antichi'ist would immediately precede 
his coming, and be the distinguishing sign of it (2 
Thes. ii.) ? AVhy do all these sad predictions of rank 
and wide-spread apostasy at the last so fill the eye 
of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and not one ray 
of the coincident millennial blessedness fall upon 
his strained and aching sight ? Are not his epistles 
prophetic, and is there not a certain natural and 
lawful meaning in language which may be depended 
upon, and which it is safe to follow ? If there be 
such meaning, if the apostolic epistles are prophetic, 
then cannot these perilous last times and the millen- 
nium coexist. That there will be a millennium no 
one doubts, and if it precedes not the coming of the 
Lord, it must follow it. It will follow it. This is 
the whole cheering and glorious burden of Isaiah 
and his brother prophets. They do not intimate, by 
so much as ever a word, that it is to precede his 
coming, while the whole burden of New-Testament 
prophecy, of Christ and of apostles, of parable and 
epistle, renders its precedent attainment simply im- 
possible. And thus all Scripture, both revelations, 
are reconciled and appear beautifully self- consistent 
throughout. Then, when the warfare of the church 

5=* 



54 THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN. 

militant is ended, and the blessed enjoyments of the 
church triumphant begin, but not till then, will the 
old leaven be purged out, and the professing 
church of Christ become a new lump, as it were 
unleavened bread. Lord, give us that bread. 
And whosoever, whatsoever his honest interpretation 
of this parable, giveth of this bread to so much as 
one of his little ones, shall be a welcome guest 
at the marriage supper of the Lamb, and the 
heavenly arches will ring with the joy of his com- 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE PROPHETIC EARTH OF DANIEL AND THE REVELATION. 

Dating fl'om the palmiest hours of Babylonian 
greatness, under Nebuchadnezzar, and the coincident 
decline and fall of the Jewish theocracy, it will not 
be denied that the four great empires of Babylon, 
Persia, Greece, and Borne, have figured more con- 
spicuously than any other Gentile powers in the 
world's history ; nor that they have a distinctly-rec- 
ognized historic existence in the prophetic Scriptures ; 
nor, whatever allusions may therein be made to 
other powers, that such allusions are merely inciden- 
tal, revealing no specific outline, nor any approach 
to an outline, of their history, as of the history of the 
four empii'es thus made the special subjects of pro- 
phetic mention. The reasons of this election are 
hidden in the counsels of the divine mind, and we 
inquire not concerning them. The fact that such 
discrimination exists, that such an election is actually 
made, is alone pertinent to our present purpose. 

The dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and the visions 
of Daniel embrace the whole period of Gentile 



56 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

civilization, the entire circle of what is termed in 
Scripture the times of the Gentiles, commencing 
with the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar of the two 
tribes of Judah and Benjamin, — the ten revolted 
tribes of Israel had long before been lost in their still 
mysterious and impenetrable captivity, — and end- 
ing with the closing scenes of the present dispensa- 
tion. These dreams and visions, interpreted, the 
former by Daniel, and the latter by direct angelic 
agency, together with the visions of the apostle of 
Patmos, as recorded in the Revelation (which latter 
visions unveil those closing scenes, with respect to 
the specific instrumentalities by which they will be 
accomplished), have a marked geographical import, 
and relate exclusively to those portions of the 
earth which were contained within the territorial 
limits of these four empires, more especially the 
Roman, as embracing within its boundanes a larger 
portion of the earth's surface than either of its pre- 
decessors, and as being the subject of more minute 
and extended prophetic detail. 

A^Hierefore it is that, in a distinctive sense, we 
term the territory thus incorporated, the prophetic 
earth. 

This distinctive appellation will be found to be 
fully justified upon careful reference to the two great 
apocalyptic writers of the Old and New Testaments, 
the book of Daniel being not less the Apocalypse 



THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 57 

of the Old Testament, than the book of the Revela- 
tion the Apocalypse of the New : the former forecast- 
ing in general outline the whole future of the four 
empires : the latter, in its relation to the closing 
scenes of the dispensation, confining itself chiefly to 
the Roman, in its present and future subdivisions. 

Hence we style the prophetic earth, as thus 
indicated, the prophetic earth of Daniel and the 
Revelation. 

The second chapter of Daniel, under the symbol 
of an inanimate image, presents an outline of the 
secular history of these empires, in respect to both 
the intrinsic and comparative value of governmen- 
tal power, as severally and successively exercised by 
them. The seventh chapter, under the symbol of 
four fierce and devouring beasts, presents an outline 
of their several histories, in respect to the moral 
quality of the practical use or exercise of that power. 
Neither chapter, however, gives any account of their 
territorial or chronological boundaries. These are 
clearly determinable from profane history. The 
dignity of the insphed record stoops not thus to jus- 
tify itself, or to confirm its never-to-be-questioned 
verity. 

The wondrous image of Daniel ii. 31-46, glorious 
and terrible, looking with lordly supremacy down 
the dim vista of the coming ages, to the end of 
the present Gentile dispensation, comprehends with 



58 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

careful precision the prophetic earth as we have 
defined it, but has no direct, nor anything more than 
a merely influential aj)plication to other regions of 
the earth. This distinction it is of great importance 
to note. 

For the convenience of our readers, we transcribe 
fi'om the sacred record the dream and its interpre- 
tation : 

THE DREAM. 

" Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This 
great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before 
thee, and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head 
was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly 
and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron 
and part of clay." Daniel ii. 31-33. 



ITS INTERPRETATION. 

" This is the dream ; and we will tell the interpretation 
thereof before the king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings : 
for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, 
and strength, and glory. . . . Thou art this head of 
gold. And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to 
thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear 
rule over all the earth [or then known world]. And the 
fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron 
breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things : and as iron that 
breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And 
whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potter's clay 
and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided, but there 



THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 59 

shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou 
sawest the iron mixed with the miry clay. And as the toes 
of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the king- 
dom shall be partly strong and partly broken. And whereas 
thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle 
themselves with the seed of men ; but they shall not cleave 
one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay." Daniel 
ii. 36-43. 



The prophet Daniel, in revealing and interpreting 
to Nebuchadnezzar the dream of the image, assured 
him that his kingdom, or the empire of Babylon, was 
its head. " Thou art this head of gold." Its head 
was not of silver, or of brass, or of iron, or of gold, 
even, of an uncertain quality. " The image's head 
was of fine gold." Now, therefore, as gold is the 
most precious of metals, and as fineness is the term 
used to designate its highest degree of value, it fol- 
lows that the srolden head of the imasre must be a 
symbol, in some special and distinctive sense, be that 
sense what it may, of governmental power, in intrin- 
sically its most precious form. 

But what is the special sense thus indicated ? To 
answer this question, we have only to inquire. What 
single and surpassing attribute, if any, of govern- 
mental power, most distinguished the empire of 
Babylon, and contributed most largely to make it 
preeminent over the three empires that succeeded it ? 
To this inquiry but one answer can be given, which 



60 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

is, that no attribute so distinguished either its own 
exaltation, or its preeminence over its successors, as 
its absolute autocracy and royalty of power. The 
prophet said to Nebuchadnezzar, " Thou, O king, 
art a king of kings, for the God of heaven hath given 
thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory; 
and ■ wheresoever the children of men dwell, the 
beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, hath he 
given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over 
them all." * " Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the 
God of Israel, Thus shall ye say unto your masters : 
I have made the earth, the man and the beast that 
are upon the ground, by my power and by my out- 
stretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed 
meet unto me. And now I have given all these 



1 Dr. Tregelles, in commenting upon this passage, has well observed: 
'* These words do not imply that Nebuchadnezzar actually held and exer- 
cised this rule over every part of the inhabited earth ; but rather that so 
far as God was concerned, all was given into his hand; so that he was not 
limited as to the power which he might obtain, in whatever direction he 
might turn himself as conqueror ; the only earthly bound to his empire 
was his own ambition." Tregelles' Daniel, p. 7. 

So also Newton: "This gift was granted to Nebuchadnezzar in conse- 
quence of his being part of the image, and was not dependent upon his 
power being golden in character. The endowment of all the successive 
empires was similar to his. Hence their assumption of names or expres- 
sions implying universality of dominion ; and their title to do this is sanc- 
tioned in Scripture. The Romans were accustomed to call their empire 
*^Orbis Terrartim,^' and in Scripture the corresponding expression, ndaa 
T) oiKoviuvri, is used. " There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that 
the whole world {ndaa fi olKovfxevri) should be taxed." Thus also Cyrus 
says, "the God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth." 
Ezra i. 2. 



THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 61 

lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of 
Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the field 
have I given him also to serve him. And all nations 
shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son, until 
the very time of his land come, and then many na- 
tions and great kings shall serve themselves of him. 
And it shall come to pass, that the nation and king- 
dom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar, 
the king of Babylon, and that will not put their neck 
under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation 
will I punish, saith the Lord, with the sword, and 
with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have 
consumed them by his hand." Jer. xxvii. 4-8. 

In harmony with the divine record, history assui'es 
us that Nebuchadnezzar, for the first time in Assyr- 
ian history, reduced all the countries that at various 
times had been subdued by the Assyrian arms, to 
one united, compact, and homogeneous government, 
obedient, throughout all the ancient Assyrian, ,as 
well as its now still more widely- extended borders, 
to the same sovereign and autocratic will, to the 
same golden head ; thus establishing, in his kingly 
person, in all its august and golden falness, a univer- 
versal Gentile dynasty, the first of the four great 
universal Gentile empires symbolized by the image, 
the opening epoch, now that Jewish supremacy had 
been forfeited, of Gentile ascendency upon the earth, 
to last till the times of the Gentiles, and of the tread- 



62 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

ing clown of guilty Israel, should be fulfilled. I^ot 
unnatural was it, therefore, looking from a merely 
human point of view, that the great Babylonian, 
as he walked in his palace and contemplated the 
glories of his capital and his realm, should boastfally 
exclaim, " Is not this great Babylon which I have 
built for the house [the metroj)olitan seat] of my 
kingdom [this great Assyrian empire, now subject to 
me alone] by the might of my power, and for the 
honor of my majesty." Daniel iv. 30. 

This grant of power to Nebuchadnezzar was 
scarcely less supreme in its munificence or unlimited 
in its terms than that conferred upon Adam before 
his fall. With how sublime a title, with what glo- 
rious privileges did Gentile civilization, now that the 
governmental supremacy of the earth had been trans- 
ferred from Israel to the nations,^ set forth upon 
its career ! How deserved its predicted doom, if 
recreant to so godlike a trust ! 

The head of gold could not have been a symbol 
of this empire, in respect to the territorial extent of 
its dominion, for in this respect it was inferior to 
each of the empii"es symbolized by silver, brass, and 
iron, that succeeded it. To what, therefore, can the 
fine gold refer, but to governmental power in the 



1 Recall the prediction of Baalam : " Lo I the people shall dwell alone, 
and shall not be reckoned among the nations." 



THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 63 

siipremest form in which it was ever conferred upon 
a Gentile king ? 

Assuming, then, — with all history, sacred and 
profane, for our warrant, — that the kingdom of 
Nebuchadnezzar, as thus symbolized, was sovereign 
power in its most unrestrained, its most autocratic, 
its most nearly theocratic sense, the symbol further 
teaches that this form of power is in itself not only 
precious, but the most precious, and that it is or can 
be evil, and was evil in the case of Nebuchadnezzar, 
in its misuse or maladministration only. If it were 
evil in itself, it would not have been conferred upon 
him, as we have seen that it was, by the direct gift 
of the Almighty, nor could it be conferred by the 
Almighty, as we know that it will be, upon him of 
whom, in prophetic vision, it is said, " The sov- 
ereignty of the world has become the sovereignty of 
our God and of his Clirist, and he shall reign for ever 
and ever." 

'^ After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior 
to thee,** — **the breast and arms of silver." This 
kingdom is admitted, by the common consent of 
expositors, to be the immediate successor of the 
Babylonian, to wit, the Medo-Persian. The arms 
have been supposed to represent, the one Media, and 
the other Persia. This seems proba'ble enough, but 
is not to our purpose. This empire was not, like its 
predecessor, an absolute monarchy, but a limited 



64 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

sovereignty. It was, as appears both £i:om Scripture 
and profane history, an aristocratic monarchy, the 
nobles, or men of birth, being, not the supporters 
only, but, in an important sense, controllers of the 
crown, and in all respects, save official rank, its 
equals. The extent of their influence is shown in 
the decree which consigned Daniel to the den of 
lions : " Then these presidents and princes assem- 
bled together to the king, and said thus unto him. 
King Darius, live forever. All the presidents of 
the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the 
counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together 
to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, 
that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or 
man for thu'ty days, save of thee, O king, he shall 
be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish 
the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not 
changed, according to the law of the Modes and 
Persians, which altereth not. "VVlierefore Eling 
Darius signed the writing and the decree," Dan. 
vi. 6-10. 

Not so did Nebuchadnezzar rule. In his golden 
power, he would have consigned such counsellors to 
the den themselves, rather than forego the exercise 
of his royal will, for " whom he would he slew, and 
whom he would he kept alive." So, also, the Per- 
sian monarch, Ahasuerus (in the book of Esther) 
and his princes acted together, and the king could 



THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 65 

not undo what they had jointly decreed concerning 
Queen Yashti. And in Ezra vii. 14, we find author- 
ity given to that servant of God from the king and 
his seven counsellors. All this shows, not a king 
acting in right of his royal prerogative, but controlled 
by counsellors, mthout whose advice and consent he 
could not act. Power was beginning to wane, to lose 
its golden excellence, precisely as the metals symbol- 
izing it were beginning to lessen, not in value only, 
but, it mil be noticed, in specific gravity also, thus 
exhibiting the reverse of stability as we descend the 
image. Circumstances soon arose, with which the 
depreciated power of the monarchs of Persia found 
itself no longer able to contend. 

That silver was the symbol of both the intrinsic 
and relative value of the Persian form of govern- 
mental power, and not of the territorial extent of its 
dominion, is evident, because, in military prowess 
and in extent of territorial acquisition, it was not 
inferior to the Babylonian. On the contrary, it 
subjugated, under Cyrus, regions (Asia Minor, for 
example) which the monarchs of Chaldea never 
reached, so that in this respect it was not only not 
inferior, but far superior to its predecessor. And 
this is the aspect under which the vision of the 
image continually presents itself. It is a symbolic 
outline of the history of the four great Gentile em- 

6* 



66 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

pires, in respect to the abstract quality or intrinsic 
value of their governmental power. 

Next succeeded the Greek or Greco-Macedonian 
empire of Alexander, — "the belly and thighs of 
brass." The identity of this symbol with this em- 
pire is admitted mthout a question. Alexander, 
" the great scourge and destroyer of Asia," but of 
superlative ambition (which the elder Napoleon 
affected in vain), with his brazen-coated legions, 
before the close of his brief reign, at the early age 
of thirty-two years, had far exceeded both the Per- 
sian and the Chaldean monarchs, alike in the celerity 
of his conquests, and the territorial extent of his 
dominions. Elsewhere in Daniel he is represented 
under the symbol of a " mnged leopard." His 
conquests extended across Asia Minor, Syria, and 
Egypt, to Affghanistan and the Indus ; and he 
paused not, if we may credit tradition, until com- 
pelled to pause, weeping that he had no more worlds 
to conquer. And yet the character of his power is 
only worthy of being symbolized by brass, — not a 
precious metal, but a mere alloy. And when, upon 
his death, his empire was divided between his four 
victorious generals, whose proud, fierce spirits had 
been nursed amidst the democracies of southern 
Greece, it is a fact, most significant of the gradual 
depreciation of Gentile power, that at Rome an 
ounce of silver was equivalent, according to Gibbon, 
to about seventy pounds weight of brass. 



THE PROPHETIC EAKTH. 67 

Tlie Greco-Macedonian empire was a military 
oligarchy, a still inferior grade of power. 

Thus descending the image, we reach at last the 
empire of the Caesars, and its ultimate tenfold sub- 
division, — "the legs of iron, the feet part of iron 
and part of clay." This empire, in its subdivisions, 
still, in the prophetic sense, exists, and will con- 
tinue to exist, until the number of its subdivisions, 
ten in all, — the ten toes of the feet, — east and 
west together, shall have reached its full comple- 
ment, which it has never reached as yet ; and until 
the present Gentile dispensation shall terminate, 
upon the overthrow, by the " stone cut out of the 
mountain without hands," of their representative 
and united strength, before the walls of Jerusalem.^ 
This empire, in its earlier development under the 
Caesars, is represented by the symbol of unmixed 
iron. Its completed development, that of the ten 
sovereignties, European, Asiatic, and African, into 
which it will eventually be subdivided, is represented 
under the symbol of iron mixed with miry clay, 
referring, unquestionably, to the mixed monarchical 
and popular, or populo-monarchic character of these 
ten sovereignties, upon this eventual subdivision of 
the Roman empire, formed to so large an extent 
already. 

1 See chapter, Antichrist of Prophecy. 



68 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

Tlie term miry, as applied to clay, is not less sig- 
nificant of the relative value of tlie ten toes of the 
feet of the image, considered as a symbol of govern- 
mental power, than is the term fineness of the 
relative value of the head. A mournful picture, 
indeed, of the gradual declension, both of the value 
and the stability of Gentile power ; a sad reversal of 
the flushed and giddy hopes of our vaunted Gentile 
progress and Gentile civilization ! But is it, for that 
reason, any less the revealed word of God ? How 
can we any more doubt it, than we can doubt the 
verity of Nebuchadnezzar's di'eam, or of Daniel's 
revelation and interpretation of it ? 

History, sacred and profane, conspire to testify 
that the dream, as interpreted by Daniel, has come 
to pass Avith literal exactness in the past, not less so, 
indeed, than the vision of the great tree, in Daniel 
iv. which was fulfilled in Nebuchadnezzar's lifetime. 
Why, then, doubt that it will any less strictly and 
literally continue to come to pass to the end ? As 
to the divine inspiration and authenticity of the 
prophet Daniel, our Sa^dour himself attests it, with 
an endorsement of the most mcontestable character. 
Matt. xxiv. 15. 

Under the dominion of the Caesars, we reach the 
most widely- extended limits of the prophetic earth, 
— of that portion of the earth's territory symbolized 
by the image ; — so that, as we proceed, we may use 



THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 69 

the terms prophetic and Roman earth in an inter- 
changeable sense. The Roman empire, or orbis ter- 
rarum of the Romans, not only for the most part 
included, but, with only here and there an exception, 
far exceeded the utmost boundaries of the three 
preceding empires. "We can call the countries in- 
cluded in it all by name, whether in the language of 
ancient or modern geography.^ We propose to show 



1 The Roman empire (which first assumed its full imperial standing in 
succession to Greece when Augustus Caesar conquered Cleopatra) attained 
its "widest territorial development under Trajan. The following is a list of 
the countries then included within its limits : 

IJT WESTERN AND NORTH-WESTERN EUROPE. 

England and Scotland : not Ireland. 

Spain and Portugal. 

France and Savoy. 

Belgium and parts of Holland west of the Rhine. 

Luxembourg and Bavarian territory west of the Rhine. 

Rhenish Prussia west of the Rhine. 

Baden, Wurtemberg, and the southern half of Bavaria. 

Switzerland. 

IN SOUTHERN AND SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE. 

Italy. 

Greece. 

All the islands of the Mediterranean. 

Turkey in Europe south of the Danube, including Bosnia, Servia, and 
Bulgaria. 

Austrian provinces south of the Danube, including the south-western 
wing of Hungary and that part of the Banat which lies east of the Roman 
Vallum. 

Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bessarabia; these four countries 
being situate north of the Danube, and answering to Trajan's province of 
Dacia. 

IN ASIA. 

The Turkish dominions, taking Assyria as the most easterly province, 



70 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

in anotlier chapter, that the Roman earth, divided 
yet united, consisting of ten independent yet confed- 
erated kingdoms, mil be the special and restricted 
sphere of the dominion of the last great monarch of 
the Gentiles, the antichrist of prophecy. 

The seventh chapter of Daniel represents these 
four great world powers in respect to the moral qual- 
ity of the practical use or exercise of their govern- 
mental power, under the symbol, as we have already 
stated, of foui* fierce and devouring beasts ; the Baby- 
lonian being represented by the majestic fulness and 
preeminence of power of the lion ; the Persian by 
the sullen fierceness and voracity (devouring much 
flesh) of the bear ; the Greek by the swiftness and 
grace and beauty, but subtlety and malignity of the 
leopard ; the Roman by the stern and haughty and 
crushing strength of a nameless, complicated, ten- 
horned monster, of indescribable horror, strong 
exceedingly, giving place in the last days, under the 
symbol of a little horn, to the last great monarch of 
the Gentiles, who, exalting himself above all that is 
called God or that is worshipped, and representing 
the consummated glory of Gentile civilization, shall 

and an imaginary line skirting the north of Arabia to Egypt as the southern 
limit. This division includes, of course, Palestine and Asia Minor. 

IN AFRICA. 

Egypt and the whole northern coast, namely, Barca, Tripoli, Tunis, 
Algeria, Morocco, and Fez ; Salle, a little outside of the straits of Gibraltar, 
being the most westerly city. 



THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 71 

Stand up against the Prince of princes, the Messiah of 
Israel, to receive from him liis everlasting condem- 
nation. 

We question not; on the contrary, we appre- 
ciate and confess ourselves by no means insensible to 
the fliscinations, the bewildering allurements, the 
aesthetic refinements, the magnificent attainments of 
science and of art, the lofty material splendor of that 
consummated Gentile glory, which will seem as fair 
and desirable to the eye and heart of unregenerate 
man, as the grapes of Sodom or clusters of Gomorrah, 
but which will not, for that reason, in its general 
spirit, be any the less hostile to God, or bear any the 
less the dark impress of Sodom, or hasten with less 
accelerated speed to the same fearful doom. If it 
leans on Sodom, with Sodom it must fall. 

Witness, finally, the catastrophe of the image, the 
tragical conclusion of Gentile ascendency : 

" A stone was cut out without hands, which smote 
the image upon its feet that were of iron and clay, 
and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the 
clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to 
pieces together, and became like the chafi" of the 
summer threshing-floor ; and the wind carried them 
away, that no place was found for them, and the 
stone that smote the image became a great mountain, 
and filled the whole earth. . . . And in the 
days of these kings [the ten kings, or sovereignties. 



72 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

symbolized by the ten toes of tbe feet of the image 
(the two feet referring, not improbably, to the east- 
ern and western divisions of the Roman empire), 
symbolized also by the ten horns of the fourth beast, 
or Roman empii'e — " and the ten horns of this king- 
dom are the ten kings that shall arise," Dan. vii. 24] 
shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which 
shall never be destroyed : and the kingdom shall not 
be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces 
and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand 
forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone 
was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that 
it break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the 
silver, and the gold ; the great God hath made known 
to the king what shall come to pass hereafter ; and 
the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof 
sure." Dan. ii. 34, 35, 43-45*. 

Surely, if language is capable of interpreting its 
own meaning, it is an act, not of peaceful and benig- 
nant blessing, but of vindictive and destroying judg- 
ment, that is here described ; not the gradual spread 
and diffusion of the gospel of peace, but the quick 
and sudden and wrathful and utter destruction of 
the more than ever proud and stately but final and 
more than ever godless Babel of Gentile power. 
" And whosoever shall fall upon this stone shall be 
broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind 
him to powder." 



THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 73 

Tlie ancient people of God, alone of all tlie na- 
tions of the prophetic earth, will escape the destruc- 
tion. " In those days shall Judah be saved, and 
Jerusalem shall dwell safely." 

" And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the 
kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the peo- 
ple of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an 
everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey 
hhn." Dan. vii. 27. 

This covenanted exaltation and glory of Israel is 
one of the deepest mysteries in the councils of the 
divine government, a mystery that angels might 
desii-e to look into ; but it stands on the everlasting 
covenants of him whose word cannot be broken. 

The verse just cited, as we understand it, describes 
the glorious sequelof these judicial scenes; the expres- 
sion, " saints of the Most High," referring to the saints, 
Jew and Gentile, of the present dispensation, in their 
thenceforward risen glory, as inhabitants of the new 
or heavenly Jerusalem, ministering as a royal priest- 
hood to the blessed inhabitants of earth during its 
millennial career ; and the expression, " people of the 
saints of the Most High," referring to the restored 
and now forgiven Jewish nation, as the leading na- 
tion of the earth during the millennium, dispensing 
from the overflo^ving fulness of its blessings to all 
other nations ; thus fulfilling the covenant of God 



74 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 

with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, — ^' and in thy 
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."' 



1 Dr. Tregelles, in remarking upon this passage, has said : " This appears 
to me to be a statement, informing us that a certain kingdom, not coexten- 
sive with that of the Son of man, will be given to a certain nation. Who, 
then, can this nation be ? Now, it is clear from many Scriptures that Israel 
will, after they are set in grace, and their blindness and consequent rejec- 
tion are ended, be the head of the nations, and bear rule over the earth. 
In chapter viii. 24, we find the expression, the mighty and the holy people, 
or, more literally, people of the holy ones, or people of the saints, — this 
Hebrew phrase answering pretty accurately to the Chaldee used in the pas- 
sage before us. Now, as in chapter viii. the Jews are the nation clearly 
denoted, so do I consider that they are intended here." Tregelles' Daniel, 
p. 45. 



CHAPTER III. 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY/ 



" When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when 
he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according 
to the number of the children of Israel." Deut. xxxii. 8. 

" And say unto them. Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I wiU take the 
children of Israel, from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and 
will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land : and 
I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and 
one king shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations, 
neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms, any more at all." Ezekiel 
xxxvii. 21, 22. 

" For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what 
shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead ? " Rom. xi. 15. 



This Gentile dispensation is spanned by a radiant 
arch which stretches its ghttering length from the 
old Judaic dispensation to the new^ from the call of 
Abraham to the last syllable of millennial time. 

This radiant arch, this beautiful bow of promise, 
consists of God's covenants or promises concerning 
Israel and Jerusalem. 

They are four in number : the Abrahamic, the 



1 This subject is more fully treated in a little pamphlet by the author, 
entitled " Glory and Shame of Israel.'' Boston : E. P. Dutton & Co. 1865. 



76 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

Mosaic, the Davidic, and the new and everlasting 
covenant of grace. 

We shall consider them in the order of Scripture, 
which is the order of time. 

Fii'st in order, both in importance and time, is the 
Abrahamic covenant. 

Concerning this covenant it should be said, before 
entering upon a more particular consideration of it, 
that perhaps there is no higher scriptural evidence 
of the future restoration of both families of the 
house of Israel, as an undivided nation, to their own 
land, and of the restoration of the land itself to more 
than its ancient beauty, fertility, and glory, than the 
terms in which this covenant is, not only at first 
expressed, but afterwards so fully and repeatedly 
confirmed. Especially is it true of the Abrahamic 
covenant, that it is God's appointed key to those 
prophecies concerning the future national glory of the 
house of Israel with which the sacred pages every- 
where abound, on which they rest as their proper 
basis, and to which they look as the proper pledge of 
their fulfilment. The words with which God, by 
the mouth of his holy prophets, almost uniformly 
closes these prophecies, are to the effect that, " even 
in the latter days, if Israel will repent and turn to 
the Lord theu' God," he " will not forget the cov- 
enants which he sware unto their fathers." " Then, 
even in the latter days " of Israel, " if any of thine 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 77 

be driven into the outmost parts of heaven [as they 
are driven now], from thence will the Lord thy God 
gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee ; and 
the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which 
thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it ; and 
he will do thee good and multiply thee above thy 
fathers." And again alluding to the closing period 
of Israel's history, he says : " Then will I remember 
my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with 
Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham will I remem- 
ber, and I will remember the land." " Therefore 
choose life [which we know Israel will choose in the 
end, but has never chosen yet], that thou mayest 
dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy 
fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give 
them." "When all these things are come upon 
thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the Lord 
thy God (for the Lord thy Ged is a merciful God) 
he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor 
forget the covenant with thy fathers which he sware 
unto them." Thus do these prophecies concerning 
Israel's final glory everywhere lean for their final 
support upon God's covenant with his friend and 
servant Abraham, and everywhere beam with its hal- 
lowed light. Let us consider it more particularly. 

Abraham, obedient to the command of God, " left 
his country, his kindred, and his father's house," and 
journeyed westward toward Canaan. Having en- 



78 ISRAEL AND JERL'SALEM OF PROPHECY. 

tered Canaan, not knowing whither he was to go, or 
where he was to take up even a temporary abode, 
he continued his joui'ney until he reached the plain 
of Moreh. There "the Lord appeared unto him 
and said. Unto thy seed will I give this land." 
"And Abraham built there an altar unto the Lord." 
Subsequently, upon his return from Egypt, he 
came again to " the place where his tent had been 
pitched at the beginning, unto the place of the altar 
which he had made there at the first." The Lord, 
appearing to him, not directly upon the plain of Mo- 
reh, but upon a not distant mountain, from whence 
the land, afterwards called holy, stretched on every 
side, to its farthest extent of view, " said unto Abra- 
ham, Lift up now thine eyes, and look ft'om the 
place where thou art, northward, and southward, and 
eastward, and westward : for all the land w^hich thou 
seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. 
And I will make thy seed as the dust of the 
earth : so that if a man can number the dust of 
the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. 
Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it, 
and in the breadth of it : for I will give it unto 
thee." Gen. xiii. 14—17. From this elevated site, 
in the clear atmosphere of Canaan, the patriarch 
could not see a single spot, in the entire range of 
view that enciixled him, except the peak of a distant 
mountain, that formed not a portion of the land given 



ISRAEL AXD JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 79 

by these words of the Lord to him and to his seed 
forever. 

This gift the Lord afterwards confii'med by a cov- 
enant, defining particularly its local extent : " In the 
same day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, 
saying. Unto thy seed have I given this land, from 
the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river 
Euphi'ates ; the Kenites, and the Kennizzites, and the 
Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and 
the E-ephaims, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, 
and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites." Gen. xv. 
18-21. 

Again; in the watches of the night, ^'the Lord 
called him forth from the curtains of his tent and 
commanded him, Look now towards heaven, and tell 
the stars, if thou be able to number them." Under 
the piu'e skies of a Judean night, he lifted up his 
eyes to the innumerable heavenly host, ^' and the 
word of the Lord said unto him, So shall thy seed 
be. I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of 
the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." 
Gen. XV. 5. 

- Finally ; when Abraham was ninety years old and 
nine, and one year before the . birth of Isaac, the 
Lord again appeared to him and said, " I will estab- 
lish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed 
after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting 
covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed 



80 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

after thee. And I will give unto thee and to thy 
seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, 
all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession ; 
and I will be their God." Gen. xvii. 7, 8. Verily, 
a gift of godlike munificence, to one who previously 
thereto was neither the father of an heir, nor, hu- 
manly speaking, likely to be, nor the owner of a foot 
of ground ! But he trusted in the most high God, 
the possessor of heaven and earth, and kept his 
charge, his commandments, his statutes, and his laws. 
" Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto 
him for righteousness." Rom. iv. 3. 

If the plainest of terms and divinest of authority 
can establish the right of the seed of Abraham to 
the possession of the land of promise, against the 
adverse claims or occupancy of any and all other 
nations, or the everlasting tenure of that right, or 
the certainty that it will be ultimately and nationally 
enjoyed as an everlasting inheritance : then, surely, 
such right, with all the privileges and blessings 
pertaining to it, is granted here. No intervals of 
interrupted possession, or dispersion and persecution 
in other lands, no tenancy of other nations, of what- 
ever duration, can devest a right, or impair the 
certainty of its ultimate and everlasting enjoyment, 
clothed with sanctions so sacred. No human pre- 
scription, no technical forfeiture, can run against so 
divine a title. The title of the Jewish nation to the 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 81 

land of Canaan, is a heavenly primogeniture, a 
celestial entail, embracing mthin its folds, Israel, in 
all its tribes and its generations. It is so proclaimed 
in the Abrabamic covenant. It is so recorded in the 
registry of the skies. What though the ten tribes 
of Israel be outcast, and the two tribes of Judah 
and Benjamin be dispersed ? All is not lost. Sus- 
pended possession is not lost possession. The terms 
of the inheritance remain the same. Four hundred 
years in Egypt, seventy years at Babylon, eighteen 
hundred years and more among the Gentiles, are of 
no adverse account to Israel in the mind of him with 
whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day 
as a thousand years. He who waits with unlimited 
long-suffering for one lost sheep, can wait indefinite 
ages for a scattered flock ; and he has promised that 
he will. 

Observe now, briefly, the renewals by the Al- 
mighty of this covenant. 

To Isaac, God said : "Sojourn in this land, and I 
will be with thee and bless thee ; for unto thee and 
thy seed will I give all these countries ; and I will 
perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy 
father, and I will make thy seed to multiply as the 
stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these 
countries ; and in thy seed shall all the nations of 
the earth be blessed." Gen. xxvi. 3, 4. 

To Jacob, God said: "The land which I gave 



82 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to 
thy seed after thee will I give the land." Gen. xxv. 
12. 

The dying Joseph said to his brethren in Egypt, 
" God will surely bring you out of this land, unto 
the land which he sware to Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob." Gen. 1. U. 

Such is the Abrahamic covenant; such the cir- 
cumstances under which it was made ; the terms in 
which it is expressed ; the divinely official sanctions 
which invest it ; its renewals, and its perpetuity ; 
such the title it conveys, and the muniments by 
which that title is surrounded ! Such is the heav- 
en-chartered right, which antichrist will seek, with 
unprecedented fury, to wrest from this now dispersed 
and despised and bleeding people, and such the 
covenants and oaths by which the God of Israel will 
oppose the fierce onsets of his satanic wrath. 

The territory thus granted (not to all the seed of 
Abraham and Isaac, for they had other seed than 
Jacob, to whom these covenants did not pertain, and 
who had no inheritance in Israel ; but to all the seed 
of Jacob) was not left by the Almighty uncertain or 
undefined. Its exact boundaries, at all points, are 
laid down in Scripture, with the most careful and 
unambiguous precision, whatever difficulty there may 
be in defining them with similar accuracy in modern 
terms. 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 83 

When the Lord aj)peared unto Moses mth the 
declared purpose of delivering the children of Israel 
out of their Egyptian captivity, and of thus fulfilling 
his covenants with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, 
he said, "I am come down to deliver my people, 
and to bring them up out of the land of Egypt, and 
to bring them unto a good land and a large." God 
himself defined the limits of the land : "And I will 
set thy bounds by the Red Sea, even unto the sea of 
the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river. 
Every place whereon the soles of your feet 
shall tread shall be yours ; from the wilderness and 
Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even 
unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be." Deut. 
xi. 22-26. 

Again, Moses defines as follows a portion of its 
borders, in the thirty-fourth chapter of Numbers, 
6-11: 

" As for the western border, ye shall have the great sea for 
a border ; this shall be your west border. This shall be your 
north border ; from the great sea ye shall point out for you 
Mount Hor. From Mount Hor ye shall point out your bor- 
der unto the entrance of Hamath ; and the goings forth of 
the border shall be to Zedad. And the border shall go on 
to Ziphron, and the goings out of it shall be at Hazar-enan ; 
this shall be your north border. And ye shall point out your 
east border from Hazar-enan to Shepham ; and the coast shall 
go down from Shepham to E.iblah, on the east side Ain," etc. 



84 ISRAEL AXD JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

Thus, as above, has Moses recorded the limits of 
the promised land, after the Canaanitish tiibes had 
acquired a prescriptive right thereto (if such a thing 
were possible against the sure word of God), by 
adverse and uninterrupted possession during a period 
of four hundred years. 

Centuries afterwards, when all the tribes of Israel 
were captive bondmen in lands far distant from Jeru- 
salem and Samaria, a portion of them for a period of 
seventy years, but by far the greater portion for a 
period which has not ended even now, the prophet 
Ezekiel, himself a fellow-exile in Chaldea with Dan- 
iel, Jeremiah, and the tribes of Judah and Ben- 
jamin, thus, as follows, defines, in perfect harmony 
with Moses, the boundaries of the promised land, 
and declares to the weeping exiles by the waters of 
Babylon, not less than its divinely-appointed bor- 
ders, the immutability of God's covenants concerning 
it: 

" Thus saithtlie Lord God, This shall be the border where- 
by ye shall inherit the land according to the twelve tribes of 
Israel : Joseph shall have two portions. And ye shall inherit 
it one as well as another ; concerning the which I hfted up 
my hand to give it unto your fathers ; and this land shall fall 
to you for inheritance. And this shall be the border of the 
land toward the north side, from the great sea, the way of 
Hethlon, as men go to Zedad ; Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim 
which is between the border of Damascus and the border of 
Hamath; Hazar-hatticon, which is by the coast of Hauran. 



ISRAEL AXD JEEUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 85 

And the border from the sea shall be Hazar-enan, the border 
of Damascus, and the north northward, and the border of 
Hamath. And this is the north side. And the east side ye 
shall measure from Hauran, and from Damascus, and from 
Gilead, and from the land of Israel by Jordan, from the bor- 
der unto the east sea. And this is the east side. And the 
south side southward, from Tamar even to the waters of strife 
in Kadesh, the river to the great sea. And this is the south 
side southward. The west side also shall be the great sea 
from the border, till a man comes over against Hamath. 
This is the west side. So shall ye divide this land according 
to the tribes of Israel." Ezekiel xlvii. 13-22. 

We may not be able to trace these boundaries now 
as accm-atelv as the above description Trould seem to 
imply, or to verify them in terms of modem geogra- 
phy, but they are not for that reason any the less 
absolutely definite, as the immutable and di-^inely- 
declared limits of the promised land ; as immutable 
to-day as on those far-distant days, when God, both 
by direct communication and by the mouth of his 
holy prophets, first defined them. And the immut- 
ability of his covenanted pui'poses ' concerning the 
children of Israel and their land can no more be 
shaken by any occupancy, or user, or prescriptive 
claims of other nations, during these long and weary 
centuries of dispersion and persecution among the 
Gentiles, than it was by the capti^^ity of four hundred 
years in Eg^'pt, or the exile of seventy years at 
Babylon. All the tribes will, as truly as God liveth. 



86 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

and his covenant standeth sure, go back to the prom- 
ised land from their Gentile dispersion, even as all 
went back from their Egyptian, and a portion of them 
from their Babylonian bondage, for the covenant with 
Abraham was an everlasting covenant. And when 
they return from among the Gentiles, it will be their 
last return, their final restoration ; "to look " (after 
a brief season of unequalled tribulation) "upon him 
whom they pierced ; " to acknowledge him as their 
king ; to repent and be forgiven ; and to become, as 
God's favored ambassadors of salvation, a blessing to 
all the nations of the earth, which latter provision of 
the Abrahamic covenant has never in the past been, 
in any sense, or for the briefest period, fulfilled. 
Then will the " times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," 
and antichrist and his hosts be miraculously de- 
stroyed, and his golden capital be destroyed, and 
down-trodden Israel be uplifted, and their beloved 
city become " a name of joy, and a praise and honor 
in all the earth." Then will all the blessings, both 
material and spiritual, of the Abrahamic covenant, 
for the first time, and for all coming time, be realized 
by Israel, and its spiritual blessings by all other 
nations of the earth. 

Such is the covenant which God made with the 
fathers of Israel, with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, 
commencing with a homeless but trusting and believ- 
ing wanderer amidst the oaks of Moreh, and ending 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 87 

only when the last of his seed shall have closed their 
earthly career, and time shall be succeeded by the 
eternal state. Such^ so actual, so almost inconceiv- 
able, is to be the future glory of Israel. But we 
need not envy her, for, when restored and pardoned, 
she will dispense the spiiitual blessings of the cov- 
enant with overflowing fulness, with a God-like 
beneficence, and all peoples and kindreds and tongues 
will be welcome partakers of her glory. " The 
Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the 
brightness of thy rising." Isaiah Ix. 8. 

Every covenant hath its seal. The seal of the 
Abrahamic covenant was the rite of circumcision. 
Cii'cumcision w^as instituted as a token of an everlast- 
ing covenant, which it was also called. " This is 
my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and 
you, and thy seed after thee : every man-child among 
you shall be circumcised; and it shall be a token of 
the covenant betwixt me and you : he that is born 
in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, 
must needs be circumcised ; and my covenant shall 
be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant." Gen- 
esis xvii. 10—13. 

The children of Israel might have entered into 
full and quiet and uninterrupted possession of their 
covenanted inheritance at once, and into the enjoy- 
ment of its covenanted blessings, so unconditioned, 
so unmingled, so glorious, but their uncircumcised 



88 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

hearts turned away from the God of their fathers, 
and chose other and false gods, until, at last, to pun- 
ish them for their sins, to bring them to repentance, 
to subdue their hearts and cleanse them from their 
iniquities, God sent them into captivity to the kings 
of Egypt ; if so be they might thereby be made 
worthy heirs and possessors of so precious a heritage. 

When, at the end of four hundred years, the bit- 
terness of their bondage had become almost insup- 
portable, God brought them up out of Egypt ; 
but scarcely had they recrossed its borders, on their 
way to the promised land, amidst miraculous displays 
of divine mercy in their behelf, when they again 
rebelled, and forfeited again the blessings of the 
covenant. 

Whereupon God instituted a new covenant, enter- 
ing into covenant with them, as he had entered into 
covenant with their fathers. But the covenant with 
them was not, like the former covenant, a covenant 
of unmingled blessing, but presented to their choice 
an alternative of blessing or of cursing. If they 
chose its curses (which they did), the Abrahamic 
covenant was to be, thereafter, not superseded or 
annulled, but suspended, until the covenant Avith 
them, exhausted of its curses and its coming woes, 
should, upon their final repentance, ensuing upon 
the persecutions of antichrist and supernatural in- 
terpositions in their behalf, be remitted and annulled 
by the new and everlasting covenant of grace. 



ISRAEL AXD JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 89 

But, though suspended, how wholly unforgotteu 
of God was his covenant with Abraham ; how for- 
ever sure its promises and its ratifying oaths ! for 
upon the very day that God commanded them, " To- 
morrow, turn ye, get ye into the wilderness," he also 
said, remembering his covenant with their fathers, 
and swearing by himself as he could not swear by a 
greater, " As truly as I hve, all the earth shall be 
filled with the glory of the Lord," of Yahveh Christ, 
of him who is to come. 

The covenant thus entered into with his rebellious 
children amidst the thunders' of Sinai, was the Mo- 
saic covenant, the covenant of the law, of the ten 
commandments. 

If its offered blessings were accepted (as accepted 
they were not), the blessings of the Abrahamic cove- 
nant, both material (so far as themselves were con- 
cerned) and spiritual (so far as both themselves, and 
through them all the nations of the earth, were con- 
cerned), might begin to be realized at once, and their 
full consummation be speedily attained. • But if the 
offered curse should be their choice (as their choice 
it was), then would the blessings of the Abrahamic 
covenant remain abeyant, and be realized by their 
children's children only, in remotest generations, after 
centuries upon centuries of bitterest persecution and 
most fiery trial should have passed away. And its 
spiritual blessings, according to the proper sense and 

8* 



90 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

full import of its terms (as is so convincingly attested 
by the whole subsequent history of God's providence, 
and as the sure word of prophecy so abundantly con- 
firms) were not to be realized by all other nations 
and all other families of the earth (through their 
agency : of course, not otherwise), until its blessings 
(both material and spiritual) were first realized by 
them. 

We should note carefully the terms in which the 
Mosaic covenant is expressed. We quote but in 
part : 

" And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken dihgently 
unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and do all his 
commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord 
thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth : 
and all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, 
if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. 
Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be 
in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the 
fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, and the in- 
crease of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed 
shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be 
when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou 
goest out. . . . The Lord shall command the blessing 
upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine 
hand unto ; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord 
thy God giveth thee. 

" But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto 
the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his com- 
mandments and his statutes, which I command thee this day, 
that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee; 
cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 91 

the field. Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store. Cursed 
shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land, the 
increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed 
shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be 
when thou goest out, . . . and the heaven that is over thy 
head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall 
be iron, . . . and thou shalt become an astonishment, a 
proverb, and a byword among all the nations whither the Lord 
shall lead thee." 

" I call heaven and earth to record against thee this day. 
that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curs- 
ing ; therefore choose life, that thou mayest dwell in the land 
which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, 
and to Jacob, to give them." Deut. xxviii., xxx. 

But observe how ever-mindful was God of his 
covenant with their fathers. Standing, as it were, 
upon the sure foundation of its everlasting promises, 
and appealing unto them therefrom, his mercy thus 
invites them : 

" And it shall come to pass when all these things are come 
upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have set before 
thee, and thou shalt call them to mind, among all the nations 
among whom the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt 
return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice ac- 
cording to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy chil- 
dren with all thy heart, and with all thy soul ; that then the 
Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion 
upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations 
whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. If any of 
thine be driven into the outmost parts of heaven, from thence 
will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he 



92 ISRAEL AXD JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

fetcli thee : and the Lord thy God will bring thee into the 
land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it ; 
and he will do thee good and multiply thee above thy 
fathers." Deut. xxx. 

" If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of 
their fathers, with their trespasses which they trespassed 
against me, and also that they have walked contrary unto 
me ; and that I also have walked contrary unto them, and 
have brought them into the land of their enemies ; if then 
their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept 
of the punishment of their iniquity : then will I remember my 
covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and 
also my covenant with Abraham will I remember, and I will 
remember the land." Levit. xxvi. 40-42. 

" When all these things are come upon thee, even in the 
latter days, if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be 
obedient to his voice (for the Lord thy God is a merciful 
God), he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget 
the covenant with thy fathers which he sware unto them." 
Deut. iv. 30, 31. 



But alas ! alas for tliem, and alas for us, cliildren 
of the Gentiles, whose millennium must await their 
millennium, whose millennium cannot commence so 
long as we tread them down, and our times are not 
fulfilled, and antichrist hath not reigned and passed 
away, and the tribulation inflicted upon the Jews, as 
a re-gathered nation, by his persecutions, hath not 
ceased (for when the millennium comes at last, it 
will come to all, both Jew and Gentile, and will 
know no discrimination between any of the inhab- 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 93 

itants of the earth, of whatever nation or kindred or 
tongue, Jew or Gentile, bond or free, in the spiritual 
blessings it will bestow, for the millennium is but 
another name for the consummation of the spiritual 
blessings of the Abrahamic covenant), — alas ! we 
say, alas for them, and alas for us ! they, the children 
of Israel, the chosen seed of Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob, even at the foot of Sinai, despised the offered 
blessing, and chose the offered curse. It was little 
less than a second apostasy, involving, as it were, in 
a second fall, and a deeper ruin, not themselves only, 
but all the nations of the earth. The weary round 
of those chosen curses has been rolling over their 
smitten land and guilty heads ever since, — is rolling 
now. No seats in parliaments, or cabinets, or chairs 
of learning ; no vaults of silver and gold, whose 
masters stretch, Rothschild-like, their Briarean arms 
across land and sea, over almost the entire circle of 
Gentile rule, and lay their weight nowhere so heav- 
ily or so securely, with as it were so iiTesistiblo a 
destiny, as upon the promised land; no political 
encompassment of thrones ; no lapse of time ; no fas- 
cinations of eloquence ; no witchery of music or of 
song, can soothe the anguish, or lull to rest the 
unsleeping terrors of that chosen doom. 

Notice the tenderness of David, when he calls to 
mind the promised glories of the Abrahamic cov- 
enant : " Seek ye the Lord and his strength ; seek 



94 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

his face continually. Remember his marvellous 
works that he hath done, his wonders, and the judg- 
ments of his mouth ; O ye seed of Jacob his servant, 
ye children of Jacob, his chosen ones. He is the 
Lord our God ; his judgments are in all the earth. 
Be ye mindful always of his covenant, the word which 
he commanded to a thousand generations ; even the 
covenant which he made with Abraham, and his oath 
unto Isaac ; and hath enjoined the same to Jacob for 
a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant ; 
saying. Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, 
the lot of youi' inheritance ; when ye were but few, 
even a few, and strangers in it." 1 Chron. xvi. 11— 
19. Ps. cv. 4-12. 

But rebellious Israel remembered not his marvel- 
lous works, and the judgments of his mouth ; they 
were not mindful always of the covenant which he 
sware unto their fathers. They heeded the persua- 
sions of mercy as little as the warnings of wrath. 
And yet God forgot never for a moment his ancient 
covenant. His heart was always turned toward 
them. His hand was always stretched out still. 
Indeed, as if to affix a final, a more solemn seal to 
the Abrahamic covenant, as if to reaffirm its perpe- 
tuity, and to renew the oaths that bound it, as if, 
indeed, that everlasting covenant would not otherwise 
stand forever sure, as if to anticipate their repentance 
and forgiveness, and its measureless wealth of bless- 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 95 

ing, lie superadded to it a supplementary covenant, 
the covenant with his servant David, filled not less 
with unmingled and overflowing blessing, without 
the shadow of a cui'se : 

" I have made a covenant witli my chosen, I have sworn 
unto David my servant. Thy seed will I establish forever, 
and build up thy throne to all generations." Psalms Ixxxix. 
1-4. 

" Then thou spakest in vision to thy Holy One, and saidst, 
I have laid help on one that is mighty; I have exalted one 
chosen out of the people. I have found David my servant ; 
with my holy oil have I anointed him; — with whom my 
hand shall be established. My faithfulness and my mercy 
shall be with him ; and in my name shall his horn be exalted. 
Also, I will make him, my first-born, higher than the kings 
of the earth. My mercy will I keep for him forevermore, 
and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also 
will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of 
heaven. I will not suffer my faithfulness to fail. My cove- 
nant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of 
my lips. Once more I sware by my holiness that I will not 
lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his 
throne as the sun before me." Psalms Ixxxix. 19, 20, 24-26. 

Listen to the millennial invitation of Israel to all 
the nations of the earth, when this covenant with 
David shall have been falfiUed; when Zion shall 
have awaked and put on her strength and Jerusalem 
her beautiful garments : " Ho, every one that thirst- 
eth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no 



96 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

money ; come ye, buy and eat ; yea, come, buy wine 
and milk without money and without price ; incline 
your ear and come unto me ; hear, and your soul 
shall live ; and I will make an everlasting covenant 
with you, even the sure mercies of David." Isaiah 
iv. 1-3. 

This invitation is, doubtless (in a spiritual sense), 
both pre-millennial and millennial. It is, without 
question, spiritually applicable, at all times, both 
before and after the second coming of Christ, to all, 
Jew and Gentile alike, to become partakers of the 
spiritual blessings of the Abrahamic covenant, to be 
followers of Christ, and to be numbered with the 
elect. But in its primary and more specially in- 
tended sense, it would seem more strictly applicable 
to Israel in the period of her millennial glory, when 
in the full enjoyment of the material, not less than 
spmtual, blessings of that covenant, and rejoicing in 
the fulfilled glories of the Davidic covenant, which 
simply presents the Abrahamic covenant to us in its 
kinsflv attributes and form. 

But in the days of the covenants and invitations 
and warnings which we have considered, nothing 
availed against the rebellious obstinacy of Israel. 
The appeals of the greatest of her lawgivers to the 
thunders of Sinai : of the most eloquent and glowing 
of her prophets to the millennial glories of Zion, 
upon the second coming of theii- Lord ; the appeals 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 97 

of the mightiest of their kings (though in strains 
attuned to a lyre that was mightier even than his 
throne), when he called to their remembrance the 
promised blessings of the covenant with Abraham, 
" the word which God commanded to a thousand 
generations," invested with an added glory by the 
covenant made by God with himself, were all alike 
in vain. Never was there, never has there been, 
even until now, a time when it was not true of the 
rebellious house of Israel, that which was spoken 
by Isaiah : " Hear, O heavens ; give ear, O earth ; 
for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and 
brought up children, and they have rebelled against 
me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his 
master's crib : but Israel doth not know, my people 
doth not consider. A sinful nation, a people laden 
with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are 
corrupters : they have forsaken the Lord, they have 
provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they 
are gone away backward." Isaiah i. 2-4. 

And yet listen to the yearnings, not less than to 
the lamentations, of the divine love over them : 
" When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and 
called my son out of Egypt. ... I drew them 
with cords of a man, with bands of love, and I was 
to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, 
and I laid meat unto them. . . . But my people 
are bent to backsliding from me : though they called 



98 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

them to the Most High, none at all would exalt him. 
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? how shall I 
deliver thee, Israel ? how shall I make thee as Ad- 
man ? how shall I set thee as Zeboim ? mine heart 
is turned within me, my repcntings are kindled 
together." Hosea xi. 

Even when their Messiah came, to plead with 
them ; to weep over them ; to gather them together 
as a hen s^athereth her chickens under her wins^s, 
that their house mi^ht no more be left unto them 
desolate; to enter into a new and everlasting cov- 
enant of grace with them, they derided and reviled 
him ; they smote him ; they spat upon him ; they 
crucified him with as little compunction as their 
Roman masters would have crucified a Roman slave. 
But a hidden thunderbolt, red AAith uncommon wrath, 
was about to descend upon them from the stores of 
heaven. "His blood be on us and on our children." 
And, true to the self-imprecation, his blood has fallen, 
and this added curse has rested and will rest upon 
them, until, delivered at last from their captivity, 
and regathered as a nation in unbelief, they shall 
be smitten by antichrist as never smitten before, and 
be overwhelmed by that fiood of tribulation such as 
never was since there was a nation, no, nor ever 
shall be. 

But darkness abideth only for the night, and 
though its latest be its thickest darkness, yet "joy 
Cometh in the morning." 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 99 

When gathered at last in and around their an- 
cient and beloved capital, to defend it against the 
assaults of antichrist and his innumerable hosts, — 
summoned to the "battle of the great day of God 
Almighty," from the ten allied realms of the pro- 
phetic earth, — they behold their rejected and cruci- 
fied, but now kingly Messiah, appearing in proper 
person in the clouds of heaven, with power and 
great glory, with the armies of heaven following ; 
when they behold him standing upon the Mount 
of Olives, and "look upon him (that same Jesus) 
whom they pierced ; " when they behold him, though 
presented to their view as of old in bodily form, 
yet arrayed in the celestial splendor of his resur- 
rection glory, surrounded by the sainted dead of all 
the ages, and by the sainted living, arrayed, like 
their blessed redeemer, in their resuiTCction glory ; 
surrounded too by all the holy angels ; when the 
rending earth, and the darkened sun, and the moon- 
less and starless sky, and the shaking heavens, 
still further attest this glorious epiphany of the 
King of kings ; when they beholdthe manifestations 
of divine mercy displayed in theii' behalf, and of 
divine wrath displayed against their foes, and wit- 
ness their supernatural destruction ; then, then at 
last, but not till then, will they confess their guilt, 
their Saviour, and their king : then " there shall be a 
fountain opened to the house of David, and upon the 



100 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and uncleanness," 
and " tlie spirit of grace and of supplication shall be 
poured upon the house of David, and upon the in- 
habitants of Jerusalem/' and " the land shall mourn, 
every family apart, as one mourneth for an only 
son ; " and blessed shall they be when they mourn, 
for they shall be comforted. God will accept their 
repentance, and "will cast all their sins into the 
depths of the sea." Then will be repealed the dread 
covenant of Sinai, and a millennium of blessing and 
an eternity of glory will succeed to a few brief and 
forgotten generations of guilt, and tribulation, and 
shame. Then will be fulfilled that blessed trinity 
of covenants, the covenant of Abraham, the covenant 
of David, and the new and everlasting covenant of 
grace. 

The covenant of David will exalt to his now 
lapsed throne a righteous branch, which shall exe- 
cute judgment and righteousness, and reign for a 
thousand years ; until he shall give up the kingdom 
unto his Father, that God may be all in all. " And 
when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall 
the Son also himself be subject unto him that put 
all things under him, that God may be all in all." 
1 Cor. XV. 28. 

The new and everlasting covenant of grace will 
descend to bless, not, as now, scattered individuals 
only, — here a Jew and a Gentile there, — but, as was 
confirmed to the fathers, all the nations of the earth. 



ISRAEL A^I) JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 101 

But first of all, and last of all, and comprehend- 
ing all, will be established, in fulness of millennial 
glory, over all the land, and over all the inhabitants 
of the land, the covenant with Abraham, and Isaac, 
and Jacob. 

Says Jeremiah, looking forward to the fulfilment 
of this covenant : 

" Behold, I will bring it [Jerusalem] health and cure, and 
I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of 
peace and truth. And I will cause the captivity of Israel and 
the captivity of Judah to return, and will build them up as 
at the first [which certainly has never been as yet]. And it 
[Jerusalem] shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an 
honor before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all 
the good that I do unto them ; and they shall fear and tremble 
for all the goodness and all the prosperity that I procure 
unto it." Jer. xxxiii. 6-10. 

These visions of Jeremiah of the glory and bless- 
edness of Israel and Jerusalem, consequent upon the 
joint return of all the tribes, upon their corporate 
unity as a restored nation, and upon the termination 
of the persecutions of antichrist, when God's con- 
suming vengeance and their great tribulation shall 
have reached their full, — when that which is deter- 
mined shall be poured upon the desolator, and " the 
consumption shall overflow with righteousness," — 
were uttered by Jeremiah more than a century after 
the ten tribes of Israel were carried into that cap- 

9* 



102 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

tivity from which they have never to this day re- 
turned, and in which no sure trace of them has ever 
been discovered. Their fulfilment belongs, therefore, 
beyond all question, to the future. 

The verses next preceding those last quoted from 
Jeremiah, emphasize more especially the material 
blessings which will ensue upon the fulfilment of the 
Abrahamic covenant : 

" Thus saith the Lord, Again there shall be heard in this 
place, which ye say shall be desolate without man, and with- 
out inhabitants, and without beast, the voice of joy, and the 
voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice 
of the bride, the voice of them that shall say. Praise the Lord 
of hosts ; for the Lord is good ; for his mercy endureth for 
ever ; and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise 
unto the house of the Lord : for I will cause to return the 
captivity of the land as at the first. 

" Thus saith the Lord of hosts. Again in this place, which 
is desolate without man and without beast, and in all the 
cities thereof, shall be an habitation of shepherds causing 
their flocks to lie down. In the cities of the mountains, in 
the cities of the vale, and in the cities of the south, and in 
the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and 
in the cities of Judah, shall the flocks pass again under the 
hands of him that telleth them, saith the Lord." Jer. xxxiii. 
10-14. 

Sui'ely this revelation would seem to contemplate 
something more than spiritual blessings only. 

The prophet proceeds, in the succeeding verses of 



ISEAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PKOPHECY. 103 

tlie same chapter, to announce tlie fulfilment of the 
Davidic covenant, the period of its fulfilment, and 
the contemporaneousness of that period with that of 
the fulfilment of the covenant with Abraham : 

"In those days, and at that time, will I cause the branch 
of righteousness to grow up unto David ; and he shall exe- 
cute judgment and righteousness in the land. In those days 
shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely, and 
this is the name wherewith she shall be called, the Lord our 
righteousness. ... If my covenant be not with day and 
night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven 
and earth ; then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and 
David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to 
be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob : for I 
will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them." 
Jeremiah xxxiii. 15, 16, 25, 26. 

Observe the descent, at the same time, of the 
new and everlasting covenant of grace, and its over- 
flowing fulness of blessing : 

" Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a 
new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house 
of Judah ; not according to the covenant that I made with 
their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring 
them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they 
brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. 
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house 
of Israel : After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law 
in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and wiU be 
their God and they shall be my people. And they shall teach 



104 ISEAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, 
saying, Know the Lord : for they shall all know me, from the 
least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord : for 
I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no 
more." Jeremiah xxxi. 31—35. 

'Who will venture to say that their iniquity, or the 
trespasses wherewith they have trespassed against 
the Almighty, have ever yet been forgiven, or that 
their sins are not remembered still ? Then can this 
prophecy find its appointed fulfilment m the futui'e 
only. 

But the crowning blessing and crowning glory 
of that blissful millennial era will be Jerusalem. 
Mount Zion will, in those coming days, be " more 
beautiful in the sides of the north " than when 
David sang her beauty and her joy, three thousand 
years ago. 

While every breath of desert air that leaves its 
tribute of added dust upon the buried wrecks of 
other ancient empires mournfully repeats that saddest 
of requiems — the fashion of Gentile glory passeth 
away — Jerusalem, "the beautiful city," "the beloved 
city," " the everlasting city," " the joy and excel- 
lency" of the millennial earth, is ever miraculously 
reserved for its destined exaltation and glory ; sit- 
ting there, as we love in prophetic vision to be- 
hold her, — the curse once lifted, — down- trodden 
nevermore, calm in her queenly glory evermore. 



ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PEOPHECY. 105 

amid the terraced hills, the blue depths, and the 
purple heights of Palestine ; commanding, midway 
in the highway of the nations, the exchanges of those 
Eastern continents ; blessing in final fulfilment of 
the covenant with Abraham, with an ever and over- 
flowing fulness of blessing, all the families of the 
earth, and receiving ever their grateful and joyful 
homage in return ; shining there, between those pleas- 
ant seas and on those silver-mantled plains — "vrhile 
the Gentiles come to her light, and kings to the bright- 
ness of her rising," while " her righteousness goeth 
forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that 
burneth " — with a beauty more beautiful than the 
beauty of Carmel, and a glory more glorious than 
the glory of Lebanon; "the place of my throne and 
the place of the soles of my feet, where I will 
dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for- 
ever." This certainly can never have been said of 
the Jerusalem of the past, any more than it can be 
said of Jerusalem now. " O thou afilicted, tossed 
with tempests, and not comforted, behold I will lay 
thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations 
with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of 
agates, and all thy borders of precious stones ; and 
all thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and 
great shall be the peace of thy children." When, 
since the Babylonian captivity, or the revolt of the 
ten tribes, or ever, have all the children of Israel 



106 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 

been taught of the Lord, or when has the peace 
of her children been great ? Never ! never the 
least approach to it ! 

The king of France complacently announced to 
the French Chambers on the fourth day of Decem- 
ber, 1841, that he had concluded a connection with 
the king of Prussia and the queen of England, for 
the consolidation of the repose of the Ottoman em- 
pire. The repose of at least one portion of that 
empire will be consolidated by no human connections, 
but consolidated it will be, and, when consolidated, 
as truly as God liveth, its repose will be sweet and 
everlasting, for the blessed trinity of covenants is 
established on sure foundations, on heaven's firm 
decrees. 

Then cometh the millennium. Then, next, he 
who is to accomplish Israel's peace and consolidate 
her repose will reign over his ancients gloriously 
for a thousand years. Then will the millennium 
end. Then, finally, will oui' radiant arch, our beau- 
tiful bow of promise, disappear, lost in the brighter 
and unrevealed glories of the eternal state. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE LITERAL BABYLON OF PROPHECY. 

I 



" We are thine : thou never barest rule over them ; they were not called 
by thy name." Isaiah Ixiii. 19. 

"Be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural 
branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee." Rom. xi. 20-21. 

Perhaps no truth is more clearly revealed in pro- 
phetic Scripture than the near coincidence of the 
restoration of both families of the house of Israel as 
one nation to their own land, and the final destruc- 
tion and desolation of the city and land of Babylon, 
as predicted by Isaiah and Jeremiah. When the 
feet of the outcasts of Israel and of the dispersed 
of Judah shall stand together within the borders of the 
pleasant land and within the gates of the pleasant 
city : then, but not till then, will reunited Israel take 
up this parable, and join in this acclaim, " How 
hath the oppressor ceased — the golden city ceased!" 
When the whole house of Israel, regathered and 
reinstated, shall perform, like any other nation, all 
the functions of a distinct, organized, and recognized 



108 LITERAL BABYLON. 

nationality in their own land : then, but not till then, 
will the burden of Babylon, which Isaiah and Jere- 
miah saw, be fulfilled in her final overthrow. When 
peace revisits the walls and prosperity the palaces of 
Jerusalem, and the curse of the Mosaic covenant is 
removed, and the blessings of the Abrahamic cove- 
nant are ushered in, and Christ ascends at last the 
throne of his father David : then, but not till then, 
will Babylon lie there upon the not distant plains of 
Shinar, a sudden and utter and final wreck of Gen- 
tile evil greatness and Gentile evil glory. 

The scriptural proof and illustration of the truths 
thus stated, form our present theme : 

" Out of the North there cometh up a nation against her 
[Babylon] which shall make her land desolate, and none shall 
dwell therein ; they shall remove, they shall depart, both man 
and beast. In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, 
the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of 
Judah together, going and weeping; they shall go and seek 
the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with 
their faces thitherward, saying, Come let us join ourselves to 
the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten." 

" Therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel : 
Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon and his land, as I 
have punished the king of Assyria, and I will bring Israel 
again to his habitation ; and he shall feed on Carmel and Ba- 
shan, and his soul shall be satisfied on Mount Ephraim and 
Gilead. In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the 
iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none ; 
and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found, for I will 
pardon them whom I reserve." Jeremiah 1. 1, 3, 4, 5, 18. 



LITERAL BABYLON. 109 

The coincidence of the two events, thus so cir- 
cumstantially set forth, is here proclaimed by the 
God of Israel in terms as explicit and direct as lan- 
guage is capable of affording. If the occurrence of 
two synchronous events be not described in the 
above Scripture, by what language could it be de- 
cribed ? AVTiat other construction will the language 
of these prophetic proclamations bear ? The words, 
" in those days, and in that time," occurring in both 
passages and linking both events together as coinci- 
dent in point of time, are perfectly definite. They 
are neither figurative nor enigmatic. 

Now, if these events have not taken place in the 
past, they must, as truly as the word of God standeth 
sure, take place in the future. This is no less true 
than that, take place when they should, they w^ere to 
take place together, or so nearly together as justly 
to be pronounced coincident in the prophetic Scrip- 
tures. 

If, therefore, the two families of the house of Is- 
rael have not as yet been jointly restored to their 
own land, and forgiven and blest as a reunited nation 
therein, according to the conditions and cii'cumstances 
predicted by Jeremiah, and their reunion sealed by 
a perpetual covenant with the Lord, then cannot the 
city of Babylon have been destroyed, and the city 
and land of Babylon have been desolated, according 
to the predictions cited. 

10 



110 LITERAL BABYLON. 

Their predicted restoration is clearly and unques- 
tionably future. For when, since the revolt of the 
ten tribes under Jeroboam, have the " children of 
Israel, they and the children of Judah together," 
sought the Lord, and entered into a perpetual cove- 
nant with him ? Speculation was never more at a 
loss than at this very day, as to who or where the 
ten tribes are. No fact, in the history of God's 
providence, has ever been wrapped in obscurity more 
profound, more mysterious, more impenetrable, than 
the identity, and abode or abodes, of the ten outcast 
tribes of Israel, from the beginning of their captivity 
even until now. Human curiosity and speculation 
have never been more completely baffled by the 
inscrutable purposes of the divine will. Their con- 
cealment has been, and still is, as hidden and effectual 
on the one hand, as the manifestation here predicted 
by Jeremiah will be patent and glorious on the other. 
There will be no mistaking the event when it occurs, 
as there could have been none, if it had occurred 
already. 

Earnest advocates are not wantincr of theories that 

o 

traces of the lost tribes are to be discovered in 
Armenia, Nestoria, Persia, and other regions of Asia. 
Lord Kingsborough devoted forty years and no incon- 
siderable portion of a princely fortune, to researches 
into Mexican antiquities tending to show that the 
ancient Aztecs and other Indian tribes are their de- 



LITERAL BABYLON; 111 

scendants. Tlie Eoman Catholic and other Em-opean 
museums opened to him the ample treasures of their 
archives. The coincidences adduced by him of many 
of their religious and social rites and customs with those 
of the ancient Hebrews are striking and impressive. 
His theory, though confused, is perhaps the most 
plausible of all, but, after all and like all, it is a theory 
only. God, who unfolds- his counsels at his own 
sovereign pleasure only, has never yet unlocked the 
secret of their concealment to mortal ken. 

If, therefore, the outcasts of Israel have never as 
yet, hand in hand with the dispersed of Judah, set 
their faces Zionw^ard, and been reestablished, forgiven, 
and blest, as a united nation in their own land, then 
cannot the coincident and final destruction of Baby- 
lon, as described by Jeremiah, have as yet occurred. 

The related inference — namely, that the dispersed 
of Judah having never yet, as we know they have 
not, been restored, so also the outcasts of Israel cannot 
have been — is equally conclusive of the futurity of 
the final destruction of Babylon. 

Again; Clirist assured the Jews that they should 
be trodden under foot of the Gentiles, until the 
times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. Now, if 
the predictions of Jeremiah, which we have quoted 
concerning the restoration of the Jews, have been 
fulfilled in the past, then also must the times of the 
Gentiles have been fulfilled in the past. But, clearly. 



112 LITERAL BABYLON. 

the times of the Gentiles have not been fulfilled. 
The Jews must therefore still be trodden under foot, 
for they cannot, at one and the same time, be scat- 
tered and trodden under foot, and restored, rees- 
tablished, forgiven, and blest as a nation. Such a 
supposition would be as illogical as it would be con- 
trary to the plainest facts of history, and of every 
day's observation. It would be simply absurd. 

When the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled ; when 
these promises of God to Israel are fulfilled; — 
"Behold, I will take the children of Israel fi:om among 
the Gentiles, whither they be gone, and will gather 
them on every side, and bring them into their own 
land ; — it shall come to pass in that day, that 
the Lord shall set his hand again the second time, 
to recover the remnant of his people which shall 
be left from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from 
Pathros, and from Gush, and from Elam, and from 
Shinar and from Hamath, and from the isles of 
the sea, and shall set up an ensign for the nations, 
and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and 
gather together the dispersed of Judah from the 
four corners of the earth; " — "and say unto them. 
Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the 
children of Israel from among the heathen, whither 
they be gone, and will gather them on every side, 
and bring them into their own land : and I will 
make them one nation in the land upon the moun- 



LITERAL BABYLON. 113 

tains of Israel ; and one king shall be king to them 
all, and they shall be no more two nations, neither 
shall they be divided into two kingdoms, any more 
at all ; — then, when the curse which has hung so 
long and so heavily over the heads of this suffering 
but chosen people is lifted; when they shall be 
" settled after their old estates," renationalized and 
blest ; then it is, but not till then, that the city and 
land of Babylon will be finally desolated, and the 
king of Babylon will be destroyed ; then it is, not till 
then, that the whole house of Israel will be able, as 
predicted, to rule over her oppressors and take up 
her triumphal song — "How hath the oppressor 
ceased — the golden city ceased ! " The return of 
reunited Israel, and her triumphal reign over her 
oppressors, will be as literal, as conspicuous to the 
observation of the whole earth, as have been her 
dispersion and her persecutions. Deny the literal 
future of Israel, as predicted by Isaiah and Jeremiah, 
and we are compelled, for the same reason, to deny 
not less her literal present and literal past, which 
would be absurd. Admit the literal future of Israel, 
as predicted by Isaiah and Jeremiah, and we are 
compelled, for the same reason, to admit the future 
final destruction of Babylon. The two events can- 
not be separated. 

Observe further the following prediction of the 
prophet Isaiah: 

10* 



114 LITERAL BABYLON. 

" The Lord will have mercy upon Jacob, and will yet 
choose Israel, and set them in their own land, and the 
strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to 
the house of Jacob. And the peoples [the Gentile nations] 
shall take them and bring them to their place ; and the house 
of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord, for ser- 
vants and handmaids ; and they shall rule over their oppress- 
ors. And it shall come to pass, in the day [not before] that 
the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and thy fear, 
and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, 
that thou shalt take up this parable against the king of 
Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the 
golden city ceased ! " Isaiah xiv. 1-4. 

When have Israel been carried back to their place 
by the Gentile nations? When have they taken 
them captives whose captives they were? When 
have they had rest from their sorrow, and their fear, 
and the hard bondage wherein they have been made 
to serve, and are serving still ? When have they 
ruled over their oppressors ? But a remnant only of 
the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin — forty-three 
thousand five hundred — were restored by Cyrus at 
the close of the Babylonian captivity, and instead of 
ruling over him, they were ruled over by him, while 
the whole house of Jacob, and a portion of the house 
of Judah (comprehending always the tribe of Ben- 
jamin) remained dispersed in supernatual servitude 
among the Gentiles, and are so dispersed among 
them now. And yet we are here plainly assured that 



LITERAL BABYLON. 115 

all these events are to precede or accompany the 
final destruction of Babylon. 

A recent writer has urged that the predictions of 
restoration and blessing to Israel, and the coincident 
and final destruction of Babylon, have been fulfilled, 
because they were uttered by Isaiah and Jeremiah 
antecedently to the restoration from Babylon under 
Cyrus. But was the nation, both branches of it, 
fully re-collected and finally forgiven then ? Have 
they sufiered nothing for unforgiven sins since ? 
Have not the outcasts of Israel remained outcast, and 
the dispersed of Judah dispersed since ? Have they 
not been a peeled nation, terribly chastised of heaven, 
ever since ? Has not that added, that most terrible 
curse of all, self-invoked while their hands were red 
with the blood of the murdered Messiah, — "His blood 
be on us and on our children," — been fulfilled with 
a terribleness with which no curse was ever fulfilled 
before ? Is it not fulfilling still ? When, since the 
return from Babylon of a portion only of two of the 
twelve tribes, could the iniquity of Israel be sought 
for, and there was none ; and the sins of Judah, and 
they not be found ? "When has there been heard 
such violence in her land, such wasting and destruc- 
tion within her borders, as since their retui'n from 
the waters of Babylon, the unpitied spoil successively 
of Syrian and Egyptian and Homan and Saracen and 
even Christian Europe ? Then cannot the concurrent 



116 



LITERAL BABYLON. 



predictions of these prophets concerning Israel and 
Babylon have been accomplished. Then hath not 
Babylon, " the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the 
Chaldees' excellency," become as when God over- 
threw Sodom and Gomorrah. 

So also the prophet Joel, describing the mustering 
of the armies of the prophetic earth at Ai'mageddon 
for the final siege of Jerusalem, which will be co- 
incident in time with the final destruction of Babylon 
by the hordes of central and northern Asia, as will 
elsewhere be shown, ^ says : 

" For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall 
bring again the captivity of Jndah and Jerusalem, I will also 
gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley 
of Jehosaphat, and will plead with them there for my people, 
and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among 
the nations, and parted my land." 

This passage renders perfectly definite the precise 
period of the final destruction of Babylon. ♦ 

If, therefore, the captivity of Israel and Jerusalem 
has not been brought again, as we know it has not, 
then, interpreting Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel together, 
or rather allowing them to interpret one another, it 
is safe to say that Babylon has not as yet been visited 
with her final doom. 

But our argument rests not here. It would be 

1 See chapter, Antichrist of Prophecy. 



LITERAL BABYLON. 117 

incomplete, if we failed to notice the harmony of 
histoiy with prophecy. Even if the past destruction 
of Babylon and the present condition of her ruins 
appeared to answer to the maledictions of prophecy, 
still it is none the less certain that their final fulfil- 
ment must be futui'e, so long as the two families of 
the house of Israel remain outcast, their organized 
nationality unrestored, and their sins unforgiven. 
But they do not so answer, nor so appear to answer. 
Let us cite a few of the most prominent of these 
maledictions : 

" Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, 
a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man 
pass thereby." Jeremiah li. 43. 

" Because of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be inhab- 
ited, but it shall be wholly desolate." Jeremiah 1. 13. 

" For every purpose of the Lord shall be performed 
against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation 
without an inhabitant." Jeremiah li. 29. 

" And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor 
a stone for foundations ; but thou shalt be desolate forever, 
saith the Lord." Jeremiah li. 26. 

" And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the 
Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom 
and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it 
be dwelt in from generation to generation ; neither shall the 
Arabian pitch tent there." Isaiah xiii. 19-20. 

Bold as the statement may appear, and contraven- 
ing as it does the cherished belief of so many thou- 



118 LITERAL BABYLON. 

sand good and faithful Cliristians of all these tarrying 
ages^ that these predictions have been akeady ful- 
filled, and, indeed, that they are to be classed among 
the very highest completed evidences of the verity 
of prophecy, and the infallibility of God's word, 
yet it is nevertheless true, that not one of these 
prophecies has ever yet been fulfilled. God's provi- 
dence in history is a not less infallible teacher than 
revelations of his word. They cannot conflict or 
disagree. Their testimony, if carefully sought for, 
will always be found concurrent and harmonious. 
" Her cities " have never, in point of fact, been " a 
desolation, a dry land, and a Avilderness, where no 
man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass 
thereby." Thousands upon thousands of the sons 
of men have passed and continually pass thereby, 
have crossed and re-crossed her ruins, throughout 
their whole extent, in every possible direction. 
Thousands upon thousands of Arabians have not 
only casually pitched their tents, but taken up their 
abodes there, which, in turn, have been inhabited 
by theii' children and their children's children, from 
generation to generation. Within the last seventy 
years, many European travellers of high note and 
unquestioned authority, among whom may be named 
Rich, Buckingham, Ker Porter, Keppel, Loftus, 
Mignan, Chesney, and Layard, have carefully trav- 
ersed and explored her ruins in all directions, always 



LITERAL BABYLOX. 119 

under Ai'abian escort, and have given us the careful 
results of their explorations. The ruins of Babylon 
contain in their very midst the Arab city of Hillah, 
->^'ith a population of ten thousand inhabitants, the 
brick and stone composmg whose corners and foun- 
dations, as also the corners and foundations of Seleu- 
cia, Ctesiphon, Kufa, Kerbellah, Baghdad, and other 
cities in the neighborhood, have been taken from the 
ruins of Babylon. Not a few of the inhabitants of 
her ruins find their livelihood, as brick and stone 
masons, by quarrying the ruins for this very purpose. 
This is proved by the testimony of every traveller 
who has visited the district of Hillah.^ There are 
also several Arab tillages, inhabited partly in tents, 
within the limits of the ruins. The site of the an- 
cient city, which is said to have been sixty miles in 
circumference, is dotted with extensive gardens and 
date groves, which latter are said to be far superior 
to those of Egypt and the finest in the world ; also 
with fruitfal wheat and rice fields ; and, as long 
ago as 1812, yielded, as Rich informs us, an annual 
tribute to its Turkish masters of 300,000 piasters.^ 

1 See, for example, Mignan's Travels in Chaldea, p. 177: " Some of the 
ravines [of the ruins of Babylon] are full sixty feet deep, which may prin- 
cipally be attributed to the Arabs, who were constantly at work to obtain 
the valuable bricks, which, from the vicinity of the river, are with little 
trouble and expense conveyed to Hillah, or any towns north or south." 

2 Rich, describing Hillah and the site of the ruins of Babylon, says : 
" The gardens on both sides of the river [Euphrates] are very extensive 
so that the town appears embosomed in a wood of date-trees. The air is 



120 LITERAL BABYLON. 

Colonel Chesney, who surveyed the Euphratean 
country in the years 1835, 1836, and 183T, under a 
commission from the British Government, says, "An 
Arabian tribe were encamped in the very midst of 
the ruins, during the whole time of my sojourn 
there." 

Again; not the least striking feature of the pre- 
dicted destruction of Babylon is its suddenness : 

" Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that 
made all the earth drunken : the nations have drunken of her 
wine ; therefore the nations are mad." 

" Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed : howl for her." 
Jeremiah li. 7, 8. 

" Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and 

salubrious, and the soil extremely fertile, producing great quantities of 
rice, dates, and grain of different kinds, though it is not cultivated to above 
half the degree of which it is susceptible. The grand cause of this fertility 
is the Euphrates." 

Major Skinner, who visited it in 1835, thus describes his approach to 
Hillah : " I crossed by a bridge of boats to the west side, which was broad 
and firm, over which I measured one hundred and seventy paces, giving to 
the breadth of the Euphrates more than four hundred feet. The bridge 
was naturally a great thoroughfare, and I passed it in company with many 
on horseback and on foot. The reach of the river below the bridge reflected 
the rays of the setting sun, which had just turned everything to gold, and 
the long rows of date-trees really glittered in the bosom of the stream." 

Buckingham thus describes his approach to Hillah : " On gaining the 
summit of this huge mass [amidst the ruins] we had the first sight of the 
Euphrates, flowing m:)jestically along through verdant banks, and its ser- 
pentine course apparently losing itself in the palm groves of Hillah, whose 
mosques and minarets we could just perceive about five miles to the south- 
ward of us." 

Verily, descriptions of anything rather than " a land made desolate, so 
that no man shall dwell therein ! " 



LITERAL BABYLON. ISl 

mourning, and famine ; and she shall be utterly burned with 
fire." 

" Alas, alas ! that great city that was clothed in fine linen, 
and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious 
stones, and pearls ! for in one hour so great riches is come to 
naught." 

" Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all 
that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness ! for in 
one hour is she made desolate." 

" And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great mill- 
stone, and cast it into the sea, saying. Thus with violence 
shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be 
found no more at all." Rev. xviii. 8, 16, 17, 19, 21. 

" And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading 
this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it and cast it into 
the midst of the Euphrates : and thou shalt say. Thus [thus 
suddenly and violently] shall Babylon sink, and not rise from 
the evil that I will bring upon her." Jer. 11. 63, 64. 

But the predictions of the suddenness have been 
no more fulfilled than those of the fulness of her 
destruction. There is nothing in history that tends, 
in the slightest degree, to verify either of these 
required conditions of her final destruction. That 
Babylon has been destroyed, no one will deny, but 
that her destruction was the result, not of sudden 
violence, but of gradual declension, is equally unde- 
niable. 

" At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth 
is moved, and the cry is heard among the nations — 
Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed." Jere- 
11 



122 LITERAL BABYLON. 

miah 1. 46. But the earth was never moved less by 
any event than by the taking of Babylon by Cyrus. 
All that is said of it in Scripture is, "In that night 
was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain, and 
Darius, the Mede, took the kingdom." Daniel v. 
31. It was no destruction of the city. It was any- 
thing rather than suddenly destroyed. It was the 
simple occupation of the throne of Babylon by one 
person instead of another, a quiet transfer of power 
from one dynasty to another, without commotion or 
violence, or any considerable destruction or slaugh- 
ter. The sentries of the king were the only victims. 
Herodotus relates that (Cyrus having taken the city 
in the night) it was not till three hours after sun- 
rise that the inhabitants of quarters distant from the 
palace knew they were living under a Persian satrapy. 
More than two hundred years after the capture of 
the city by Cyrus, so far from having been suddenly 
destroyed at that or any antecedent period, it was, 
under the reign of Alexander, one of the chief cities 
of the East, the metropolis of his dominion. St. 
Peter wrote his epistle there in the sixty-fifth year of 
the Christian era, more than six hundred years after 
the capture of the city by Cyrus. Long after the 
establishment of Christianity, the patriarch of Baby- 
lon was one of the great ecclesiastical rulers of the 
East. Four hundred and sixty years after Christ, 
Theodoret speaks of Babylon as being inhabited in 



LITERAL BABYLON. l^ft 

part by Jews. Five hundred years after Christ, the 
famous Babylonian Tahnud was promulgated Nine 
hundred and seventeen years after Christ, Babel is 
mentioned as a small village on the site of Babylon. 
The city of Hillah, before referred to, was enlarged 
and fortified eleven hundred years after Christ. 
Skinner speaks of HDillah as a city, in eighteen hun- 
dred and thirty-three, of twelve thousand inhabitants. 
Not long since, a bishop of Babylon was consecrated 
by the Pope. 

No period in the declension of Babylon has ever 
been marked by any of the attending signs and 
tokens, so numerously connected in Scripture with 
its sudden, utter, and final overthrow. 

Finally ; Babylon has never been that great mari- 
time and commercial city described in the eighteenth 
chapter of the Bevelation. She was anything rather 
than a city of merchants in the days of Chaldea, 
Persia, Greece, or E-ome. 

Wherefore we affirm that Babylon, before she 
can be destroyed according to the predictions of 
Isaiah and Jeremiah (than the fulfilment of which 
nothing can be more certain), must first be restored. 
That she will be restored in more than her ancient 
splendor, and be the crowning and representative 
glory of our Gentile civilization, we cannot doubt, 
when we remember the words with which the apos- 
tle of the Eevelation records her final doom. It 



124: LITERAL BABYLON. 

must not be forgotten that he reveals only the clos- 
ing scenes of the present dispensation, thus further 
establishing beyond a question the futurity of the 
final destruction of Babylon : 

" After these things I saw another angel, coming down 
from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was 
lightened with his glory. And he cried with a mighty voice, 
saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, . . . because 
by reason of the wrath of her fornication all the nations have 
fallen, and the kings of the earth committed fornication with 
her, and the merchants of the earth waxed rich through the 
power of her delicacies. . . . Because she saith in her heart, 
' I sit a queen and am not a widow, and shall see no mourn- 
ing.' Therefore in one day shall her plagues come, death, 
and mourning, and famine, and she shall be utterly burned 
with fire, because mighty is the Lord who judged her. . . . 
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn, . . . and 
every shipmaster, and every passenger, and sailors, and as 
many as trade by the sea, stood afar off, and cried when they 
saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ' What city is like unto 
the great city ? . . . alas, alas ! the great city, wherein were 
made rich all that had ships in the sea, by reason of her cost- 
liness ! because in one hour was she made desolate.' And a 
mighty angel took up a stone, like a great mill-stone, and cast 
it into the sea, saying, ' Thus with violence shall the great 
city Babylon be thrown down, and shall no more be found at 
all.' " Eev. xviii. 1-21. Tregelles' translation. 

The Babylon here described — for so Scripture 
expressly and repeatedly assures us — is Babylon in 
the land of Chaldea, not, as some have supposed. 



LITERAL BABYLON. 125 

Rome in the land of Italy. We have been able to 
discover in Scripture no color of evidence that there 
are two cities described therein with the name of 
Babylon common to both. It appears to us a wholly 
fanciful and unwarranted substitution of names. The 
prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, as if effectually to 
forestall any such substitution, are most carefal uni- 
formly to locate the Babylon whose destruction they 
foretell, in Chaldea. As for instance : " Come down 
and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, 
sit on the ground : there is no throne, O daughter 
of the Chaldeans, for thou shalt no more be called 
tender and delicate, ... sit thou silent, and 
get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans : 
for thou shalt no more be called the lady of king- 
doms." 

But, admitting that literal Eome and literal Baby- 
lon are, in the prophetic sense, the same, and that the 
latter simply stands in prophecy for the former, we 
are not able to perceive how our argument for the 
restoration of Israel, as presented in these pages, 
would thereby fail, or the argument of our opponents 
be thereby served. These prophecies concerning 
the restoration of Israel would still remain unful- 
filled, and the certainty and futurity of their fulfil- 
ment would still remain undisturbed and sure. 

It will be a sad hour in the world's history that 

witnesses the final downfall of Babylon and the 
11* 



126 LITERAL BABYLON. 

supernatural destruction of her king ; but it will be 
a joyful hour in the Avorld's history that witnesses 
Israel's recovery, forgiveness, and blessing, and the 
descension to earth of her millennial king. The 
former event prophetically is of no scriptural conse- 
quence, excepting as it denotes the latter, which so 
divuiely ushers in the millennium. It is wonderful 
how the history of the world hovers around Israel 
and Jerusalem, and finds its highest significance and 
the only true solution of its mightiest problems there. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE SYMBOLIC BABYLON OF PROPHECY. 



ITS COMPOSITE CHARACTER, INCLUDING, NOT ROMANISM ONLY, 
ALL FORMS OF FALSE RELIGION AND INFIDELITY. 



" And upon her forehead a name written, a mystery, Babylon the great, 
the mother of the harlots and the abominations of the earth." Revelation 
xvii. 5. 

The eigliteenth chapter of the Revelation de- 
scribes the literal, the seventeenth the symbolic 
Babylon of prophecy. 

Thoughtful reader, pause. Throw not aside your 
Bible in despair. Wherefore knowest thou, if these 
two chapters of the Revelation be hard to be under- 
stood, that it is not thy duty, in the light of other 
Scripture, to study them all the more ? They may 
not be so hard to be understood as at first appears. 
If your name be written in the book of hfe, the clouds 
you so much dread may be big with mercy, which 
will break in blessings on your head. 

Two of the most notable symbols of prophetic 
Scripture are presented in the seventeenth chapter, 
those of the woman and the beast. The beast is the 
same as described in the seventh chapter of Daniel, 



128 SYMBOLIC BABYLOX. 

and has been referred to in preceding chapters. But 
the woman, in the present prophetic connection, is a 
symbol peculiar to the prophet of the Revelation, 
and is thus described : 

" And there came one of the seven angels who had the 
seven bowls, and talked with me, saying, ' Come hither ; I 
will shew unto thee the judgment of the great harlot that 
sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth 
committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were 
made drunk with the wine of her fornication. And he car- 
ried me away into the wilderness in the spirit: and I saw a 
woman sitting upon a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphe- 
my, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was 
clothed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and 
precious stones and pearls, having a cup of gold in her hand 
full of abominations — and the filthiness of her fornication, 
and upon her forehead a name written, a mystery, Babylon 
the great, the mother of the harlots and the abominations 
[idolatries] of the earth." Rev. xvii. 1-5. Tregelles' trans- 
lation. 

Woman is in Scripture the invariable symbol of a 
moral system, good or evil. The woman here de- 
scribed is the symbol of a manifestly, and to the last 
and most opprobrious degree, evil system. She is 
seen sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, and is at 
first represented as his mistress, guiding and control- 
ling him. He is her servant, obsequious to her will, 
upholding and supporting her ; but afterward, when 
she has served his purposes sufficiently, when he no 



SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 129 

longer requires the aid of her sorcery and her en- 
chantments, when he is able to grasp and maintain 
supreme dominion without them, then " the ten 
horns which thou sawest [the symbols of the ten 
kings of the prophetic earth] and the beast [xui to 
di-^Qlov], these shall hate the harlot, and shall make 
her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and 
burn her with fire. For God hath put into their 
hearts to fulfil his mind [and to make one mind], 
and to give their kingdom unto the beast, until the 
words of God shall be completed." Rev. xvii. 16, 
17. Tregelles' translation. 

Wherefore it appears that the woman is to be 
destroyed when this beast, this last great monarch 
of the Gentiles, shall, measurably or mostly through 
her agency and by means of her allurements, and 
with their consent, have arisen to supreme dominion 
over the ten allied kings of the prophetic earth, and 
have become their imperial head, sitting in the tem- 
ple of God, showing himself that he is God, glorify- 
ing himself as God, and exalting himself above God, 
until the words of God shall be fulfilled. 

Who is the woman, and who the beast? The 
first inquiry we propose to consider in the present 
chapter ; the second in our next. 

As to the extent of her dominion, it will at least 
be coextensive with that of the beast that carrieth 
her, the extent of whose dominion, even to its lineal 



130 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 

boundaries, we have defined in the second chap- 
ter. It is not improbable that her dominion may be 
even wider and more influential than his, for she is 
described, not as reigning like him over a certain 
given and limited region of the earth, but as the 
mother of all the abominations, of all the idolatries, 
of the earth at large, without any local limitation 
whatever. Be this as it may, however, it is suffi- 
cient here that her dominion will at least be coex- 
tensive with his. 

The name of the woman, of this world-wide evil 
system, this panderer to the lust of dominion of this 
last great Gentile despot, who by her will rise to 
power only, in conjunction with his confederated 
allies, to destroy her when his power is gained, is 
styled in Scripture symbolic Babylon. 

We observe, in the first place, that the dominion 
of the woman and the beast, certainly in its accom- 
plished supremacy, is future. 

Some have supposed the beast to be a symbol of 
Pagan Rome, and the woman the symbol of Pagan- 
ism. This cannot be, for the prophet of the Reve- 
lation expressly assures us that the beast is to ascend 
(^e'Uet dii^ix^ixlvBiv), whereas, when the prophet wrote. 
Pagan Rome had already ascended to the height of 
its power. 

Others have supposed that the beast represents 
Papal Rome, and the woman the Papacy. But this 



SYMBOLIC BABYLOX. 131 

supposition must be equally erroneous, for the same 
prophet no less distinctly tells us that the " ten 
horns and the beast (xai t6 diiglov), these shall hate 
the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, 
and shall eat her flesh and burn her mth fire." 
Rev. xvii. 16. If, therefore, the latter supposition 
were true, it would involve the necessity of the 
Pope's destroying the Papacy, in order to exalt him- 
self to supreme dominion as Pope, which would be 
absurd. 

Again; the reign of the woman and the beast 
must be future, for what sovereign system, such as 
is symbolized by the woman, reigns, or has ever 
reigned, over any ten kings of the prophetic earth ? 
When has the prophetic earth, the territory of 
the Roman empire (eastern and western divisions 
together), been divided into ten separate and inde- 
pendent kingdoms, or been ruled over by ten con- 
federated kings who have been subject to a single 
sovereign, and have concui'red to " give to him their 
kingdoms until the word of God shall be fulfilled," 
and with him to destroy that system ? What single 
sovereign wears, or has ever worn, these ten pro- 
phetic diadems, or held these ten prophetic realms 
subject to his sceptre ? If such a system and such 
a sovereign have not existed in the past, and exist 
not now, their predicted reign must be future, what 
types so ever have signified, or may signify, their 
character or their appearing. 



132 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 

We come now to consider the woman only. For 
many reasons she cannot be the Papacy. The Papa- 
cy fui-nishes no evidence of any drift in the necessary 
du-ection. The confluent floods of a system so com- 
prehensive, so all-embracing as symbolic Babylon, — 
the mother of all the idolatries of the earth, — cannot 
flow in so shallow and narrow a channel as that of 
so confined and exclusive an ecclesiasticism. Mod- 
ern tendencies set overwhelmingly in widely oppo- 
site dii'ections. Symbolic Babylon is the mother, 
not of this harlot, or of that, — not the slightest 
limitation in this regard is intimated by the prophet, 
— but of all the harlots, of all the evil systems. So 
prolific and comprehensive a maternity cannot be 
predicated of any one known system, of Romanism, 
or Judaism, or Mohammedanism, or the Greek 
Church, or Hindooism, or any or all forms of infidel 
protestantism, or any or all forms of ritualism or 
ecclesiasticism, most of all of one so exclusive and 
unsympathetic, so jealous and exacting, so ofifensive 
to its sister harlots, as Romanism. No one of these 
systems is so constituted that it can congenially 
embrace within its fold all its fellows. What more 
improbable, not to say impossible, in the light of 
present tendencies, or upon any supposable grounds, 
than that any one of the systems should ever absorb 
and become the sovereign and congenial mistress of 
them all ? Ah no ! the radical exclusiveness of each 



SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 133 

and every one of these systems precludes it from so 
extended a sway, from that universality of dominion 
ascribed to symbolic Babylon. 

"And in her was found the blood of prophets, 
and of saints, and of all that have been slain 
upon the earth." Rev. xviii. 24. Suppose, now, 
that Romanism, or any one of these systems, was 
to become coextensive with the prophetic earth, 
how is it possible that this stain of universal 
blood - guiltiness should attach to it alone : that 
in it alone should be " found the blood of 
prophets, and of saints, and of all that have been 
slain upon the earth ? " It would be possible only 
by its loving adoption of all the bloody atrocities of 
all the other evil systems of the earth. Were it 
Romanism, the blood which Paganism has shed must 
attach to her. The blood which Judaism and Hin- 
dooism and Mohammedanism and the Greek Church 
and an infidel protestantism and every other evil 
system has shed, or may shed, must attach to her. 
Who so bold as to affirm that Romanism, that any 
one of these widely-diverse evil systems, would ever 
consent to so solitary a preeminence, so unshared a 
monopoly of blood-guiltiness, as fondly to contract 
and assume, and absorb and concentrate within, itself, 
so as to make wholly its own, the proper responsi- 
bility and respective blood-guiltiness of each and all 
the other evil systems and forms of harlotry of the 

12 



134 SYMBOLIC BABYLOX. 

earth, from the lowest and most debased of Pagan- 
ism to the highest and most refined of an infidel 
and self-glorifying, a compromising and emasculated 
protestantism. 

Not only is symbolic Babylon, in the matured 
development of her evil energy, to rule over the 
kings and inhabitants of the earth, but they, in 
turn, are to be wholly fascinated by her resplendent 
charms, and wholly subject to her satanic will. 
They will joyfully accept and be made drunk by 
the golden cup of the wine of the wrath of her for- 
nication, in whose guilty embrace will repose, and to 
whose broad skirts will cling, all the bloody stains of 
all the harlots of the earth. Think you Romanism 
is ever to wield so world-wide a fascination, that any 
sign, even the remotest, of such a destiny is any- 
where to be discerned within the whole cii'cle of 
these modern skies ? 

It is safe, at this point, to conclude that symbolic 
Babylon is not, and cannot be, any one of the systems 
to which we have referred, and that, whatever she 
may otherwise be, her principal characteristic will be 
a certain infidel latitudinarianism, whose lines of lati- 
tude will be ^dde enough and firm enough to con- 
tain within their ample and tenacious embrace all 
the infidelities and abominations of the earth. 

Where then shall we look for symbolic Babylon ? 

The Revelation (chapter xvii.) teaches us that it 



SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 135 

will be a -NYorld-wide system, a system of stupendous 
moral e^dl, of most imposing and seductive aspect, 
seducing by the deHciousness of its living, and mak- 
ing di-unk by the golden cup of the wine of the wrath 
of its fornication, the kings and nations of the earth. 
Still further, the E-evelation (chapter xviii.) leads us 
to its home, the central and metropolitan seat of its 
dominion, the land of Shinar, the banks of the 
Euphi-ates, the literal Babylon of prophecy: where 
it will be indissolubly associated, if not absolutely 
identified, with a world-wide commercial system, of 
proportions more grand, more deftly harmonized, 
more glorious (according to the standards of earthly 
glory) than the world has ever seen. 
Turn now to the vision of the ephah : 

" Then the angel that talked with me went forth and 
said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes and see what is this 
that goeth forth. And I said, What is it? And he said. 
This is an ephah that goeth forth. He said moreover, This 
is their resemblance [aspect or appearance] through all the 
earth. And, behold, then there was lifted up a talent 
[weighty piece] of lead ; and this is the woman that sitteth in 
the midst of the ephah. And he said. This is wickedness. 
And he cast it into the midst of the e^^hah ; and he cast the 
weight of lead upon the mouth thereof. Then I lifted up mine 
eyes and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, 
and the wind was in their wings ; for they had wings like the 
wings of a stork : and they lifted up the ephah between the 
earth and the heaven. Then said I to the angel that talked 
with me, Whither do they bear the ephah? And he said 



136 SYMBOLIC BABYLON, 

unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar ; and it 
shall be established and set there upon her own base." Zech. 
V. 5-11. 

The epliah was a Hebrew measure of all kinds of 
solids and liquids, equivalent to about seven and a 
half gallons of our measure. It was the Hebrew 
emblem of commerce, the symbol of merchants. The 
ephah of this vision, when first seen by the prophet, 
is in motion, "going forth." Afterwards, though 
at first invisible (being concealed therein by a weighty 
cover of lead), the cover being removed, a woman 
(the remembered symbol of a moral system) is dis- 
closed to the view of the prophet sitting in the 
midst of the ephah. After which something sym- 
bolizing wickedness is cast into it by the angel. He 
then restores the cover to its place, concealing the 
woman from the prophet's sight. Finally (and we 
are now introduced to the sequel of the vision, to 
the closing events symbolized by it), two women 
are seen to break from " its confinement, to exalt the 
haughty symbol between the earth and the heaven, 
and to bear it, with swift wings and strong — Where? 
« To the land of Shinar." Wherefore ? " To build 
it an house there, to establish it and set her upon 
her own base there," — precisely where symbolic 
Babylon is to rear her metropolitan throne. 

We have in this vision, first, the symbol, not of a 
commercial system only, but of a vast commercial 



' SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 137 

system. " This is their resemblance through all the 
earth." We have next a moral system which, under 
the symbol of a woman, gives life and inspiration 
to this symbolic ephah or secular system, exercising 
sovereign control over it, directing and determining- 
its movements ; which builds for it an house or lit- 
eral city, and estabhshes for it a dwelling-place. 
This city is declared to be on the plains of Shinar, 
on the banks of the Euphrates, in the land of Baby- 
lon, — precisely where the literal Babylon of proph- 
ecy is destined to be reared. 

Now Zechariah is preeminently a latter-day prophet. 
He delineates to a more remarkable and circumstan- 
tial extent than perhaps any other Old-Testament 
prophet, those scenes which are to be immediately 
associated with the conversion and the dawning of 
the millennial glory of the house of Israel. The 
vision of the ephah must therefore have some specific 
connection mth those scenes, with that particular 
period of the world's history when they will occur. 
Does it not teach us that not the sceptre, nor the 
sword, nor the mitre, but the ephah will be the con- 
spicuous and distinguishing symbol of that period; 
that one at least of its chief characteristics will be a 
colossal, world-wide, and imposing commercial sys- 
tem, and that that system, as it will have been 
controlled, so it will be controlled to the last, by a 

12* 



138 SYMBOLIC BABYLOX. ' 

woman, or moral system, wKose constant and insep- 
arable companion is wickedness. 

Turn now to the apostle Paul. In discoursing to 
the Thessalonians of Christ's second coming, he says 
(we adopt B. W. Newton's translation) : 

" That day [the day of the Lord] will not commence except 
there first come the apostasy ; and the man of sin be revealed, 
the son of perdition [the ' beast '].... Ye know that 
at present there is that which restraineth [the talent of lead 
that covered the ephah ?] in order that he might be revealed 
in his appointed season. For the mystery [and ' upon her 
forehead a name was written, Mystery,'] of wickedness (aio- 
filag, lawlessness) [of that which was cast by the angel into the 
ephah ?] is already working, only there is at present one that 
restraineth [the angel who cast the talent of lead upon the 
mouth of the ephah ?], until it become developed out of the 
midst [out of the midst of what? the ephah?], and then shall 
the wicked one [6 ai^ojuog, the lawless one, the masculine of 
dcfo/iiia, lawlessness or " wickedness "] be revealed, whom the 
Lord shall consume by the breath of his mouth, and destroy 
by the brightness of his coming." 2 Thess. ii. 3-9. 

We have thus in the woman of the Revelation 
and the woman of the ephah, two vast systems of 
stupendous moral evil, having the same destined 
dwelling-place and final representative centre, which 
will be the merchant city of the earth, the great 
metropolis of its commerce ; possessing the same 
secular and commercial characteristics and affilia- 
tions; the consummated development and manifesta- 



SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 139 

tioii of botli of wliicli is future ; tlie clearly reyealed 
characteristics of both of which are in no respect 
diverse from one another ; the sway of each of which 
which is peerlessly imperial. Then, by way of com- 
mentary, Paul describes to us in singularly coincident 
terms, the coui-se of the present Gentile dispensation, 
which is uninterrupted spiritual declension to the 
close, terminating as the predicted career of symbolic 
Babylon will terminate, in great worldly exaltation, 
but in iiTemediable catastrophe. 

Is there, w^e next inquire, in process of develop- 
ment any great and extensive evil system, answermg 
nearly or remotely to the tw^o evil systems which we 
have thus considered, whose secular characteristics 
are chiefly commercial, and whose easy conscience 
thi'ows over the wide earth and all forms of evil the 
commodious shelter of an infidel latitudinarianism 'i 
If such an one we find, then shall we have found at 
least a type of symbolic Babylon. 

Look, for instance, at England. Look at London. 
What is London but the capital, the fountain-head, of 
a colossal, w^orld-wide, and w^orld-imposing commer- 
cial system, gro^^dng ever more and more wide-spread 
in its dominion, ever more and more lustful in its 
venality and its greed? What are England and 
her commercial system but interchangeable terms? 
"What is the English government but the mere crea- 
tm-e of her commercial system, reflecting its spirit 



140 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 

and enacting its will. It is the power behind her 
throne. At the royal behest of her autocratic mis- 
tress, she establishes upon munificent foundations 
Roman Catholic universities and educates Roman 
Catholic priests ; legalizes the support of eastern 
idolatries and ministers in their temples ; pays tribute 
to the obscene rites of Juggernaut; acknowledges 
Mohammedanism ; presides over the priesthood of 
Buddha ; forces open the ports of the most populous 
nation of the earth to her baleful opium-trade, sur- 
rounding to this end with all-powerful safeguards 
the most gigantic commercial monopoly the world 
has ever seen, while scarce an arm is lifted or a voice 
is raised against the wicked prostitution, all along 
the serried ranks of her national establishment. In- 
deed, as if actually to verify the vision of the ephah, 
and to build an house for it, she has sent out, under 
a three years' commission. Colonel Chesney, accom- 
panied by a most competent and intelligent staff, 
gentlemen all of high commercial and scientific 
attainments, to explore and survey the commercial 
capabiHties of the Euphratean country, the land of 
Shinar itself, and they have reported most favorably. 
In running over the record of England, and counting 
up a few only of the antichristian enormities of her 
infidel latitudinarianism, how can we fail to behold 
in her at least the beginning of the fulfilment of the 
vision of the ephah, the beginning of the reign of the 



SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 141 

harlot of the E-evelatioii ; not a type merely, but, as 
it were, the veritable features of symbolic Babylon, 
" the mother of [all] the harlots, and [all] the abom- 
inations of the earth? " ^ 

A^Tierefore, in conclusion, we believe that sym- 
bolic Babylon, the harlot of the Revelation, mil, 
in a certain distinctive and systematic sense, be the 
moral animus, the animating and presiding genius, 
of a vast confederated system of governmental policy 
and power, coextensive with the limits, and having 
as the basis of its suj)port the commercial wealth 
and energy of the prophetic earth of Daniel and 
the Revelation; that it will be the sovereign and 
acknowledged mistress of that system, and as such 
be glorified, and be a shining, but deceitful and fatal 
counterfeit of Christ's millennium; that her costli- 
ness and delicacy of life, administered unto by all 

1 Listen to Dr. Chalmers : " Revelation xviii. What can be the city here 
spoken of ? It is much liter London than Rome — a commercial than a 
mere ecclesiastical capital. The lamentation of the kings for Babylon 
point more to the ecclesiastical capital of their monarchies, whereas the 
description of her wealth and merchandise point greatly more to our own 
London. The lamentation of the sailors points more to a place of great 
shipping interest than to Rome or any place in Italy, and strengthens the 
argument for its being the capital of our own land. We cannot observe 
that shipmasters are much engaged by the traffic of Rome ; and their lam- 
entation seems far more applicable to London, lapsed, it may be, when the 
period of this fulfilment comes round, into antichristianism. The mer- 
chants of our own land are far more the great men of the earth than those 
of any other nation." Sabbath Scripture Readings, vol. iv., p. 423. 

This eminent divine quite mistakes, as it appears to us, the locality of 
the Babylon of prophecy ; and yet how many there are whose hearts are 
oppressed with similar fears 1 



142 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 

that the concentrated governmental power and con- 
centrated commercial wealth of the apostate pro- 
phetic earth can bestow, and her earthly glory, in all 
its myriad forms and appliances, the loftiness of her 
self-conceit and the meretricious grandeur of her 
style, will be beyond all former compare ; that, in 
her stately charms, she will be the last, the proudest, 
the most magnificent triumph of Gentile civilization, 
preluding in her pleasant palaces, to the measure of 
her flutes and soft recorders, the quickly- spec ding 
dominion of the beast, her own fiery. judgment and 
the final destruction of her queenly capital ; that her 
local and metropolitan centre will be in the land of 
Shinar, on the banks of the Euphrates, in the city 
and land of Babylon ; that antichrist, — the mon- 
ster of Daniel, and the beast of the Revelation, — 
first wooing and supporting her as his mistress, and 
ascending into sole and supreme dominion by the aid, 
in part, of her fascinations, her enchantments and 
her sorceries, will, in the end, invoking the willing 
concurrence of the ten confederate kings of the pro- 
phetic earth, turn upon and destroy her, and himself 
thenceforward attract the wonder, and command the 
homage and exact the worship of the rulers and the 
inhabitants of the prophetic earth (" and all that 
dwell upon the earth shall worship him " (Rev. 
xiii. 8.), " glorifying himself as God until the words 
of God shall be fulfilled ; " until the Lamb of God, 



SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 143 

the Prince of Peace, the Messiah of Israel, shall 
come again, the second time, not as a despised car- 
penter's son, born in a manger, but as the " stone 
cut out of the mountain without hands," the King of 
kings and Lord of lords, whom the heaven of heavens 
cannot contain, to judge and to execute vengeance 
upon the apostate earth ; to render his anger with 
fuiy and his rebuke with flames of fire ; to gather 
his living saints, and the departed saints of all these 
lingering ages in their risen glory to himself, to 
their eternal rest in the heavenly Jerusalem ; to re- 
estabhsh, under a more glorious theocracy than of 
old, restored and now forgiven Israel in her earthly 
Jerusalem; and to send forth this ransomed and 
chosen people upon the sublimest, as it Avill be the 
most successful, of earthly missions (of which all 
present Christian missions are, or can be, but the 
faintest types), namely, the redemption, through his 
blood, not as now, of a "little flock," — here a Jew 
and a Gentile there, — but of all the spared inhabi- 
tants of the earth. 

Christian reader, take heed and beware of the 
deceitful, insidious, and deadly leaven of symbolic 
Babylon. Her influence is all around thee, to bewil- 
der -and beguile thee. It is everywhere. The whole 
moral atmosphere is chaiiged with the poison of her 
breath. Universal toleration — little discriminating, 
however, between right and wrong — universal cath- 



144 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 

olicity, the illimitable capabilities of progressive 
development of an unsanctified, or but nominally 
sanctified and self-glojying humanity, are the magic 
charm by which she Avorks, the soothing opiate by 
which she is lulling the church and the world asleep. 
It is essentially the very sin by which fell the angels, 
by which leavened Israel fell, by which have fallen, 
and will continue to fall to the end of the dispensa- 
tion, the great Gentile empires of the earth. It is 
the refined and accumulated result, swollen by the 
accretions of all these rolling ages, of that very 
Phariseeism and Sadduceeism, of that corrupting and 
baleful leaven, which so caught and filled our Sav- 
iour's eye at the very commencement of his mission. 
The danger is greater than ever now, for Satan's 
time, the reign of the prince of this world, is short, 
and it will be as wrathful as it will be brief. " Woe 
to the earth and to the sea ! because the devil is 
come down unto you, having great wrath, knowing 
that he hath but a short time." 



CHAPTER YI. 

THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

" And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names 
have not been written, from the foundation of the world, in the book of 
life of the Lamb slain. . . . Here is the endurance and faith of the 
saints." Rev. xiii. 

'* These [the beast and the ten kings] shall make war with the Lamb, 
and the Lamb shall overcome them : because he is the Lord of lords and 
King of kings : and those who are with him are called, and chosen, and 
faithful." Rev. xvii. 

ANTICHRIST is not anticliristiamsm, an abstraction, 
an nnembodied principle, an impersonal idea. 

Antichrist is the beast of the Kevelation ; the little 
horn of, respectively, the seventh and eleventh chap- 
ters of Daniel ; the king of fierce countenance of the 
eighth and prince that shall come of the ninth of 
Daniel ; the king of Assyria of the tenth and king 
of Babylon and Lucifer of the fourteenth of Isaiah ; 
the man of sin and son of perdition of the second 
chapter of the second epistle to the Thessalonians. 
He is better known, however, as the beast of the 
Revelation than by any other title. These, with their 
accompanying descriptions and portraitures, are sep- 

13 



146 THE AXTICHRIST OF PEOPHECY. 

arate titles and accounts of one and the same person. 
That person is the last great monarch of the Gentiles, 
the anticlirist of prophecy. He is not many persons, 
or a succession of persons (as, for instance, the Popes 
of Rome), but one person, having an individuality 
that is all his own, which no other nor any number 
of other persons has ever shared, or can share, 
however remarkably they may, in some or in many 
respects, have answered to the prophetic account of 
him, have typified his character, or foreshadowed 
his coming and his career. Antichrist, the antichrist, 
is no more to be regarded in any merely Protean, or 
generic and representative, or speculative, mystical 
and spiritualized sense, than is he against whom he 
will finally gather the chosen strength of the armies 
of the ten confederated kings of the prophetic earth 
before the walls of Jerusalem, himself to be so re- 
garded. The antithesis, Christ and antichrist, is a 
perfect one, as perfect in its opposing personalities 
as in its opposing moral qualities. Thus, for ex- 
ample : 

CHRIST. ANTICHRIST. 

John iii. 31. " Comes from above." Rev. xi. 7. " Comes from below." 

John V. 43. " Comes in his Fa- John v. 43. " Comes in his own." 
ther's name." 

Phil.ii. 8. "Humbled himself and 2 Thess. ii. 4. "Exalts himself 

became obedient." above all." 

Is. liii. 3. " Was despised and re- Kev. xiii. 3, 4. "All the world 

jected, and we esteemed him not." wonder after the beast, saying, Who 

is like unto him ? " 

John vl. 38. "Comes to do his Dan. xi. 31. "Does according to 

Father's will." his own." 

John xvii. 4. "Glorifies God on Rev. xiii. 6. "Blasphemes the 

earth." name of God." 



I 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 147 

John X. 14, 15. " The good Shep- Zech. xi. 16, 17. " The evil shep- 
herd that giveth his lile for the herd or idol shepherd who shall tear 
sheep." the flesh." 

Phil. ii. 9, 10. " God highly exalts " Is. xiv. 14, 15. " Exaltcth him- 
him, and gives him a name above self above the heights of the clouds, 
every nanu', that at the name of Je- yet is brought down to hell." 
sus every knee should bow." 

Matt. xxiv. 30. "Shall be seen Is. xiv. 16. " They that see thee 
coming in the clouds with power shall narrowly look upon thee, say- 
and great glory." ing, Is this the man that made the 

earth to tremble, that did shake the 
kingdoms ? " 
Kev. xi. 15. " Shall reign for ever Dan. vii. 26. "They shall take 
and ever." away his dominion to consume and 

destroy it to the end." 
Heb.i.2. "Theheir of all things." 2 Thess. ii. 3. " The son of perdi- 
tion." 

Altliough we might dwell at length ujDon the texts 
.here cited and compared, as famishing clear and 
substantial criteria, by which antichrist, when he 
enters upon his career, may be recognized and iden- 
tified, and some of the principal characteristics and 
incidents of his reign may be determined, yet our 
only object now is to refer to them as establishing 
beyond a question his personality. If the one series 
of texts affords no evidence of the personality of anti- 
christ, then does the contrasted series afford none of 
the personality of Christ. If the one class of texts 
fails to prove the personality of one particular anti- 
christ, as distinguished from and preeminent over all 
types and precursors, then must the other equally 
fail to prove the personality of Christ. Deny that 
the prophets. Old and New Testament alike, prove 
the existence of this particular, personal, and final 
antichrist, and that they describe the principal events 
of his career, and it is impossible in logical fairness not 
to deny also that the prophets and evangelists prove 



148 THE a>;tichrist of prophecy. 

the existence of the personal Christ, and that they 
record the principal acts of his life and the principal 
events of his mission and career. 

True, the prophet who portrays the beast of the 
E-evelation elsewhere informs us that there are many 
antichrists (1 John ii. 18) ; indeed, that whosoever 
denies that Christ is to come (egxofiEPov in the orig- 
inal, and ventunim in the Vulgate) in the flesh is 
antichrist ; but it will be observed that he does not, 
in his epistle, as in the Kevelation, designate these 
antichrists by name, or give us any particular account 
of them, or attach any specific title to them. It is 
of antichristianism, the spirit of antichrist, that the 
prophet discourses in his epistle, but it is of the 
antichrist that he discourses, and whose portraiture is 
drawn by his inspired pen in the Revelation ; not / 
the portraitui-e of any type or precursor of antichrist, 
of any or all the ages, of Antiochus Epiphanes, or 
Mohammed, or the Napoleons, or either of them, or 
any Pope, or any succession of Popes, however sig- 
nally they may have foreshadowed his reign, or 
contributed to cast up a highway for him, but of the 
literal antichrist of the very last days, of, so to speak, 
the very last hours, of this Gentile dispensation ; of 
the great final monarch of the prophetic earth and 
of him alone. The prophet of the Revelation means, 
as Daniel, the apocalyptic revelator of the Old Tes- 
tament, meant, that there should be no mistake as 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 1-19 

to the personal identity or lofty preeminence in evil 
of this last antichrist, or as to the distinctive and 
expressly revealed characteristics of his reign. 

To illustrate still further the personal identity of 
this literal and final antichrist, we propose to care- 
fully identify the symbols enumerated at the com- 
mencement of this chapter, as referring one and all 
to one and the same person. To this end we will 
compare the accounts given of him under these 
symbols in the different chapters of Daniel and the 
Revelation in which they occur, premismg only that 
we can but anticipate the sui'prise of the reader (once 
ha^dng made himself familiar with the portraiture of 
antichrist in the Eevelation) to find how easily he 
will be able to follow him, under every change of 
symbol, under every altered title, through, not the 
pages of Daniel only, but the entire range of pro- 
phetic Scripture, never for a moment losing sight of 
him, or erring as to his personal identity in all its 
strict and proper fulness. Thus : 

AS THE BEAST. AS THE LITTLE HORN, 

Ilev.xiii.6. " He opens his mouth Dan. vii. 25. "He speaks great 

in blasphemy against God, to bias- words against the Most High." 
pheme his name, and his tabernacle, 
and them that dwell in heaven." 

Rev. xiii. 7. "He makes war with Dan. vii, 21. " He makes war with 

the saints and overcomes them." the saints and prevails." 

Rev. xiii. 5. " Authority was given Dan. vii. 25. " The saints are given 

unto him forty and two months," i.e. into his hand until time, times, and 

1260 days. the dividing of time," i.e. 1260 days. 

The presumption here is certainly a fair one that 
the beast of the thirteenth of the Revelation and 

13* 



150 THE AJs'TICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

the little horn of the seventh of Daniel are hut sep- 
arate symbols of one and the same person. Again : 

AS THE LITTLE HORN. AS THE SECOND LITTLE HORN. 

Dan.vii.25. " Speaks great words Dan, xi. 26. "Speak marvellous 

against the Most High." things against the God of gods." 

Dan. vii. 22. " Shall prevail until Dan. xi. .33. " Shall prosper till 

the Ancient of days comes, and judg- the indignation [against Israel and 

ment-is given to the saints of the Jerusalem] be accomplished.'' 
Most High, and the time comes that 
the saints possess the kingdom." 

The symbols thus far referred to are all clearly 
identical. Again : 

AS THE SECOND LITTLE HORN. AS THE KING OF FIERCE COUNTE- 

NANCE. 

Dan. xi. 41. " He shall enter also Dan. viii. 9. "He waxes great 

into the glorious land." toward the pleasant land." 

Dan. xi. 40. " Enters the glorious Dan. viii. 17. " At the time of the 

land at the time of the end." end shall be the vision." 

Dan. xi. 36. " He shall prosper Dan. viii. VJ. " He shall prosper 

till the indignation [against Israel in the last end of the indignation " 

and Jerusalem] be accomplished." [against Israel and Jerusalem]. 

Finally : 

THE KING OF FIERCE COUNTS- THE PRINCE THAT SHALL COME. 
NANCE. 

Dan. viii. 11. "Takes away the Dan.ix. 27. " Causes the sacrifice 

daily sacrifice." and oblation to cease." 

Dan. viii. 19. "Shall prosper in Dan.ix. 27. " Till that determined 

the last end of the indignation." is poured upon the desolator." 

Thus the beast of the thu'teenth of the Revelation, 
the little horn of the seventh, the little horn of the 
eleventh, the king of fierce countenance of the eighth, 
and the prince that shall come of the ninth of Dan- 
iel, are seen to be identical symbols, representing the 
literal and final antichrist of prophecy. We say 
final, because it will be observed that, with a single 
exception, the last two contrasted texts in each of 
the foregoing sets of comparisons establish his fall as 
being when the indignation against Israel and Jeru- 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PEOPHECY. 151 

salem shall be accomplished, and the time of the end 
shall hare arrived. 

The evidence by which the identity of the sym- 
bols so variously and concurrently representing anti- 
christ in prophetic Scripture is clearly established 
might be much expanded. Thus, for example : 
" The prince that shall come " of the ninth of 
Daniel, " shall prosper until the consummation, and 
that determined is poured upon the desolator." 
(v. 27.) The "king of Assyiia " of the tenth of 
Isaiah shall prosper " till the Lord hath performed ' 
his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jeru- 
salem." The "king of Assp^ia " is therefore still 
another title of the antichrist. 

In the fourteenth of Isaiah (verses 24, 25) he is 
again called the Assyrian, " The Lord of hosts hath 
sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it 
come to pass ; and as I have purposed, so shall it 
stand : That I will break the Assyrian in my land, 
and upon my mountains tread him under foot ; then 
shall his yoke depart from off them and his burden 
from off their shoulders" — i.e. the shoulders of 
Israel ; a sure proof, by the way, of their restoration 
in unbelief. 

In the same chapter he is also called "the king of 
Babylon " and " Lucifer," from his blasphemous 
assumption, perhaps, of the character of Christ as 
the blight and morning star. 



152 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

We have thus considered some of the evidences 
of the personality of the literal and final antichrist 
of prophecy, and of the identity of some of the 
various symbols by which he is represented. 

These evidences contain in most instances direct 
proof, and in all conclusive implication of the futurity 
of his reign. We will consider, however, more par- 
ticularly and more apart, further proofs of the futurity 
of his reign, though further proof would scarcely 
seem to be wanting than the plain declarations of 
prophetic Scripture which we have already consid- 
ered, which place the period of his reign " at the 
time of the end;" when ," the indignation [against 
Israel and Jerusalem] shall be acomplished ; " " when 
the Lord hath performed his whole work upon 
Mount Zion, and on Jerusalem ; " in " the last end of 
the indignation," and " when the transgressors are 
come to the full," i.e. when their full number is 
accomplished, which certainly cannot be said as yet. 
These plain declarations are perfectly definite and 
conclusive, and yet they are but a tithe of the scrip- 
tural evidence of the futurity of antichrist's reign, 
nor do we propose, in proceeding to the considera- 
tion of further proof on this point, to allude to 
more than a tithe of that which remains. 

First, antichrist is described as " exalting himself 
above all that is called God, or that is worshipped," 
2 Thess. ii. 4 ; as " planting the tabernacles of his 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 153 • 

palace between the seas [the Dead and Mediterra- 
nean] in the glorious holy mountain " (Daniel xi. 
45) ; as sitting in the temple of God, shewing himself 
that he is God." 2 Thess. ii. 4. 

Now " the temple of God " is an expression ap- 
plied in Scripture to three things, and three only. 
1st. To the actual temple at Jerusalem, as in 1 Sam. 
i. 9. 2d. To the bodies of individual saints, as in 
1 Cor. vi. 19. 3d. To the church of God, as in 
1 Cor. iii. 17. It is manifestly impossible that anti- 
christ could sit in any but the first of these three, 
and the coinciding expression of Daniel, " the glori- 
ous holy mountain," fixes the locality of that temple, 
not, as some w^ould have it, at Rome, but in the holy 
city, at Jerusalem, and there only. 

Now, we have seen that the various symbols of 
antichrist in Daniel and the symbol of antichrist in 
the Revelation are strictly identical, and also that the 
periods at which these prophets severally predict his 
reign are identical. Their descriptions in this regard 
are perfectly precise and harmonious. 

But the Apocalypse was written by John twenty 
years after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A. d. 
71, and was a revelation, as the term itself implies, 
not of the past, but of the future. There has been 
no temple at Jerusalem in which antichrist could thus 
sit and pollute, from the time of its destruction by 
Titus even until iiow. John, therefore (and not less 



-154 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

Daniel), in prophetically recording the desecration 
of the Jewish temple by antichrist, must have had 
reference to a period which is clearly and unques- 
tionably future. 

And here, in passing, let us pause for a moment, 
to show more specifically that Antiochus Epiphanes 
could not, as many have supposed, have been the 
antichrist of either Daniel or the Revelation (although 
Daniel, in his eleventh chapter, describes Antiochus 
at length as polluting the Jewish temple and wor- 
ship), for he died more than one hundred and sixty 
years before Christ. He cannot, therefore, be the 
antichrist of John, and if not of John, certainly not 
of Daniel, for we have seen that the two are iden- 
tical. Antiochus is perhaps the most remarkable of 
all the types of antichrist, certainly in many respects. 
He overran 'the holy city and the holy land, took 
away the daily sacrifice, and profaned the temple ; 
but he did not live at the time of the end, in the last 
end of the indignation, when the transgressors were 
come to the full, when the Lord had performed his 
whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem. 
He did not stand up against the Prince of princes, 
was not broken without hand, i.e. by special and 
direct divine interpositioii, did not reign in undivided 
sovereignty over any ten prophetic realms of the 
eastern and western Roman earth, nor did any ten 
confederated kings therein flee to him, to seek under 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 155 

his more ii'on rule a refuge from tlie popular com- 
motions that menaced theii' thrones. The asfe of 
democracy, of the struggle of the clay against the iron 
for independence, was comparatively unknown and 
undeveloped then. For the same reason, Mohammed 
cannot have been antichrist, much less any j^ope, or 
any number or succession of popes. There is in 
Rome no mountain, much less the glorious holy 
mountain of which Daniel speaks, and to which our 
Saviour alludes in the twenty-fourth of Matthew as 
the seat of the holy place. There are not CA^en, as 
is classically supposed, seven distinct hills there. 
There is no temple of God there, capable of being 
thus desecrated and profaned. 

Again; we are told by Daniel that the period of 
antichrist's reign will be a season of unexampled 
tribulation. He says expressly and again and again, 
that this tribulation will be at the time of the end, 
and will be immediately connected with the reign of 
antichrist. 

"And he [antichrist] shall plant the tabernacles 
of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy 
mountain, . . . and at that time there shall be 
a time of trouble, such as never was since there was 
a nation, . . . and at this time thy people 
[Israel] shall be delivered, every one that shall be 
found written in the book." Daniel xi. 45; xii. 1. 

John, in the Revelation, refers distinctly to this 



156 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

tribulation, aud identifies it with the reign of anti- 
christ : 

" And it was given unto him [the beast] to make war with 
the saints, and to overcome them, . . . and he causeth 
all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and 
the free and the bond, to receive a mark on their right hand, 
or on their forehead : [and] that no one be able to buy or 
to sell save he that hath the mark, the name of the beast, or 
the number of his name, . . . and all that dwell upon 
the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in 
the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of 
the world." Revelation xiii. 

So also our Saviour foretold this season of tribu- 
lation, connecting it immediately with the reign of 
antichrist, and his own second appearing : 

" When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desola- 
tion, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy 
place ; . . . there shall be great tribulation, such as was 
not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor 
ever shall be. . . . Immediately after the tribulation of 
those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not 
give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the 
powers of the heavens shall be shaken ; and then shall appear 
the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then shall all the 
tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man 
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." 
Matthew xxiv. 

Now, if this season of unexampled tribulation be 
past, then must the time of the end be also past ; 



THE ANTICIIEIST OF PEOPHECY. 157 

then also must antichrist have " planted the taberna- 
cles of his palace between the seas in the glorious 
holy mountain " in the past ; then must the full 
number of transgressors have been accomplished in 
the past ; then must the indignation against Israel 
and Jerusalem have ceased, and Israel been deliv- 
ered in the past ; then must the sign of the Son of 
man, which our Saviour foretold, have appeared in 
heaven in the past ; then must the Son of man have 
come again in his own glory, and in his Father's 
glory, and in the glory of the holy angels, and the 
righteous living have been transformed, and the 
sainted dead raised from their graves to meet him 
at his coming in the past ; then must we be living in 
the millennium now. Alas, how many aching hearts 
and weary heads and weeping eyes and righteous 
and waiting souls will refuse to believe it. If, 
therefore, we are not li^dng in the millennium now, 
and antichrist is not reigning now, as we know from 
the unquestionable criteria which we have considered 
he is not, then must his reign unquestionably be 
future. 

Finally ; not only is the empire of antichrist, the 
vast governmental fabric symbolized by the image of 
the second of Daniel, to be supernatui-ally destroyed 
at the time of the end, by the stone cut out of the 
mountain without hands, but antichrist is at the same 
time to be destroyed supernaturally himself. 



158 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

'* He shall also stand up against the Prince of 
princes, but he shall be destroyed without hand 
(Daniel viii. 25), i.e. by direct divine interposition, 
which interposition, it is to be noticed, will be 
attended with various miraculous signs and tokens, 
as described by our Saviour, — the darkening of the 
sun, the mthholding of the moon, the falling of the 
stars from heaven and the shaking of its powers, 
signs which have never been manifested yet : 

" These [the ten kings of the prophetic earth and the beast] 
shall make war upon the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome 
them, for he is the Lord of lords and King of kings." Eev- 
elations xvii. 12-14. 

" And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth, and his 
armies, gathered together to make war upon him that sat on 
the horse, and with his army [the legions of heaven]. And 
the beast was taken, and he who was with him, the false 
prophet, that wrought miracles in his presence, with which 
he deceived those that received the mark of the beast, and 
those that worship his image. [What false prophet thus min- 
isters, or has ever thus ministered, to the Pope of Rome ?] 
These both were cast alive into the lake of fire which burn- 
eth with brimstone. And the rest were killed with the sword 
of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of 
his mouth; and all the fowls were filled with their flesh." 
Eev. xix. 19-21. 

So Paul : 

" The man of sin, the son of perdition, . . . that 
wicked one whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of 
his spirit, and destroy with the brightness of his coming." 
2 Thes. ii. 3, 8. 



THE AXTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 159 

So also Isaiali : 

*' And lie shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, 
and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked one." 
Isaiah xi. 4. 

Has any sovereign of the prophetic earth, eastern 
and western divisions together, holding sway over 
its ten final allied realms and ten final concurrins: 
Idngs, ever been thus supernaturally destroyed in 
the past ? If not, then must the reign of antichrist 
unquestionably be future. 

"We have thus considered the personality of anti- 
chi'ist, and the fatuiity of his reign. Let us turn 
next to the prophetic record' of his reign. 

Its most distinguishing feature will be its connec- 
tion Avith Israel and Jerusalem. In this connection, 
it would almost appear as if antichrist were to be 
raised up expressly to be the judicial^ final, and con- 
suming scourge of God's ancient covenant people. 
His record, in this regard, is to be found chiefly in 
the last six chapters of Daniel. The fii'st six give us 
a picture of the foui' great Gentile empires, and the 
course of Gentile civilization firom its commencement 
to its close ; the last six a picture of Israel and Jer- 
usalem as affected by Gentile rule and the reis^n of 
antichrist. The first six revolve around Babylon ; 
the last six around Jerusalem. The fii'st six are 
written in the native tongue of Babylon, the Chal- 



160 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

dee ; the last six in the native tongue of Israel, the 
Hebrew. The first six give ns, in outline, the 
career of the great Gentile kings who precede anti- 
christ ; the last six give us in detail the principal 
acts of antichrist as connected with Israel and Jeru- 
salem. It is thus, and thus only, that it is possible 
to view antichrist in proper boldness of relief. 
Israel and Jerusalem, far more than many would at 
first suppose, constitute the great key-note of human 
history, and antichrist will, on the one hand, be 
their last, most envious, most vengeful, and, for a 
season, most successful foe, as he will be, on the 
other, the last great idol of Gentile civilization, the 
representative of its mightiest and grandest epoch, 
wondered after and worshipped by all. He will 
tread down the Jews as they were never trodden 
down before, and will tread them down to the very 
end. 

Contemporaneously with his reign, the Jews will 
become a restored but still unforgiven and unbeliev- 
ing nation, with a rebuilded temple and reestablished 
worship. Their worldly resources and worldly 
pomp and pride will exceed all precedent and com- 
parison. " Replenished from the East, their land 
will be full of silver and gold, neither is there any 
end of their treasures ; their land is also full of 
horses, neither is there any end of their chariots ; 
their land is also full of idols." Isaiah ii. 6—8. 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 161 

Though restored as a nation, they will be restored, 
not in favor, but in anger. Judgments will await 
their return more consuming than any ever inflicted 
upon them before ; " the Lord shall lop their bough 
with terror, and the high ones of statiu'e shall be 
hewn down, and the haughty shall be made hum- 
ble." Antichrist will be the instrument employed : 

" I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against 
tlie people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the 
spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the 
mire of the streets." Isaiah x. 9. " Wherefore thus saith 
the Lord God, Because ye are all become dross, behold, 
therefore I wiU bring you [the entire house of Israel, all the 
tribes] into the midst of Jerusalem. As they gather silver, 
and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the 
furnace, to blow upon it, to melt it ; so will I gather you in 
my anger and my fury, and I will leave you there and melt 
you. Yes ! I will gather, and blow upon you in the fire of 
my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof; and 
ye shall know that I the Lord have poured out my fury upon 
you." Ezekiel xxii. 19-22. 

" And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy 
the city and the sanctuary ; and the end thereof shall be with 
a flood, and unto the end of the war [of antichrist against 
Israel and Jerusalem] desolations are determined." Daniel 
ix. 26. 

These persecutions will not cease until the hour 
for the destruction of antichrist, and the coincident 
deliverance of Israel, shall arrive. 

If the Jews are to be restored as an already for- 

14* 



162 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

given and believing nation, as some suppose, wliy 
these persecutions after their return? If, as we know 
from Zechariah, they are to be converted as a nation, 
they must of course return unconverted. The Jews 
will at first willingly receive antichrist. " I am come 
in my Father's name and ye receive me not : if 
another shall come in his own name, him ye will 
receive." John v. 43. 

Antichrist will enter into a covenant with them, 
and cleave unto them with flatteries. *^ And he shall 
confirm the covenant with many [i.e. Israel] for one 
week [or hebdomad, a period of seven years], and in 
the midst of the week [at the end of three and a half 
years] he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation 
to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations 
he shall make it desolate, even until the consumma- 
tion and that determined shall be poured upon the 
desolator." Daniel ix. 21. That is, in his jealousy 
of the undivided homage and worship of all the 
inhabitants of the earth, and of every vestige and 
memorial, however prostituted, of the true God, he 
will violate his covenant, assail Jerusalem, and make 
war upon its people. He will for a season be vic- 
torious. He will overthrow the Jewish worship. 
He will plant the tabernacles of his palace between 
the seas in the glorious holy mountain. He will sit 
in the temple of God, showing himself that he is 
God, exalting himself therein above all that is called 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 163 

Godj or that is worshipped, setting up the abomina- 
tion of desolation in the holy place. Then shall 
come Israel's time of trouble, such as shall not 
have been since there was a nation, no, nor ever 
shall be : 

" Behold the day [not the day of the Lord, of Christ's sec- 
ond coming ; that is still future] cometh for Jehovah, and 
thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will 
gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle ; and the city 
shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished ; 
and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the resi- 
due of the people shall not be cut off." Zechariah xiv. 2. 

This description applies, in no sense, to the sub- 
sequent and final siege of Jerusalem, for then the 
city will not be taken, no outrage will be committed 
upon it by its foes, no portion of it will go forth into 
capti^dty. 

But the end draweth nigh. " For the elect's sake 
[now so nearly worn out by antichrist] those days 
shall be shortened." Antichiist shall come to his 
end, and none shall help him. The battle of the 
great day of God the Almighty is at hand. But 
antichi'ist little realizes how soon and effectually he 
will be opposed by the armies of heaven and their 
divine Commander, appearing at their head in proper 
person. 

For some untold reason, the residue that is not cut 
off rebel against antichrist again, and defy his utmost 



164 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

rage. Whereupon he prepares to assail Jerusalem 
with still more overwhelming fury. Let Revelation 
paint the scene : 

" For behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall 
bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also 
gather all nations [of the prophetic earth], and will bring 
them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat [Jehovah judging], 
and will plead with them for my people, and for my heritage 
Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and 
parted my land." Joel iii. 1, 2. 

" Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles : Prepare war, wake 
up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let 
them come up: Beat your ploughshares into swords, your 
pruning-hooks into spears. . . . Put ye in the sickle, for 
the harvest is ripe ; come, and get ye down, for the press is 
full, the vats overflow ; for their wickedness is great. Multi- 
tudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. . . . The 
Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from 
Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shall shake, but 
the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of 
the children of Israel." Joel iii. 9-16. 

" The Lord shall go forth, and fight against those nations, 
as when he fought in the day of battle, and his feet shall 
stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives." Zechariah 
xiv. 3, 4. 

" And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to 
destroy [not all nations, but] all the nations that come against 
Jerusalem [i.e. the ten nations of the prophetic earth], . . . 
and they [i.e. Israel] shall look upon me whom they have 
pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for 
his only son." Zechariah xii. 9, 10. 

" And when they had spoken these things, while they be- 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 165 

held, lie was taken up ; and a cloud received him ont of their 
sight. And while they looked steadfastly towards heaven as 
he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel ; 
which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up 
into heaven ? this same Jesus that is taken up from you into 
heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go 
into heaven." Acts i. 9-11. 

" For they are the spirits of demons, working miracles, that 
go forth unto the kings of the whole world [ttj? olxoo)fASPrjg 
oh]g^ i.e. the whole prophetic earth], to gather them to the 
battle of the great day of God the Almighty. . . . And 
they gathered them together into the place which is called in 
Hebrew Armageddon. . . . These [i.e. the ten kings of 
the prophetic earth and the beast] shall make war upon the 
Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, because he is the 
Lord of lords, and King of kings, and those who are with 
him are called, and chosen, and faithful." ..." And I 
saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse ; and he that 
sat upon him was [called] Faithful and True. . . . And 
the armies which were in heaven were following him. . . . 
And out of his mouth proceeded a sharp sword, that with it 
he should smite the nations : and he shall rule them with a 
rod of iron : and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness 
of the wrath of God the Almighty. And he hath on his gar- 
ment and on his thigh a name written. King of kings, and 
Lord of lords. And I saw an angel standing in the sun ; and 
he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in 
the mid-heaven. Come, be gathered together unto the great 
supper of God ; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the 
flesh of chief-captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the 
flesh of horses, and of those that sit on them, and the flesh 
of all men, both small and great. And I saw the beast, and 
the kings of the earth, and his armies, gathered together to 
make war with him that sat on the horse, and with his army. 



166 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

And the beast was taken, and he who was with him, the false 
prophet that wrought miracles in his presence, with which he 
deceived those that worship his image. These both were 
cast alive into the lake of fire which burneth with brimstone. 
And the rest were killed with the sword of him that sat upon 
the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth : and all 
the fowls were filled with their flesh." Revelation xvi., xvii., 
xix.^ 

But antichrist and his armies are not to be the 
only victims of the interposing wrath of Heaven. 
The hour of the final destruction of his golden cap- 
ital, the literal Babylon of prophecy, has also come. 
Note the call that summons forth the hordes of cen- 
tral and northern Asia to its destruction, even while 
his armies are beleaguering Jerusalem : 

" Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet 
among the nations, prepare the nations against her, the 
kingdoms of Ararat, Mini, and Aschenaz ; appoint a captain 
against her; cause her horses to come up as the rough cater- 
pillars. Prepare against her the nations, with the kings of 
the Medes, the captains thereof, and all the rulers thereof. 
And the land [of Babylon] shall tremble and sorrow : for 
every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Bab}^- 

1 This will not be the only occasion when there has been a direct and vis- 
ible interference of almighty power for the deliverance of Israel. God 
divided the Red Sea for their escape from Egypt. He caused the walls of 
Jericho to fall down. He fought for them against the kings of Canaan. 
He descended on Sinai to confirm with them, for their future guidance, 
the covenant of the law, with its glorious but rejected alternative of per- 
petual blessing. Sinai trembled and was shaken ; and he has said, " Yet 
once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven." 



THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 167 

Ion, to make her a desolation without an inhabitant." Jere- 
miah li. 27-29.1 

Thus AYill Babylon fall and the golden city cease. 
Her broad walls shall be broken, and her high gates 
be burned with fire, her mighty men be taken, and 
every one of their bows be broken, for the spoilers 
have come unto her from the north, even at the very 
time (as swift messengers from Babylon will hasten 
to announce) that the Lord of hosts shall break the 
Assyrian in his land, and upon his mountains tread 
him under foot. Israel, repentant and forgiven, 
exalted and blest, will rejoice and lift up the loud 
and triumphant acclaim, " How hath the oppressor 
ceased — the golden city ceased." 

Thus, — man having demonstrated at last his 
incapacity for self-government apart fi-om God, apart 
from the active, interposing presence of the per- 
sonal divine glory, whatever variety of form his 
experiment at self-government may have assumed, 
— this our Gentile dispensation will have run the 
vast round of earth, and have reached again its 
starting-point, the land of its nativity, and, return- 
ing home in grief, as it were to die, its cradle will 

1 The " nations " here referred to cannot be the same as those described 
as being gathered, under antichrist, before Jerusalem, for the latter are 
those of the ten kings of the prophetic earth, while the nations here specified 
are not within the limits of the prophetic earth. See Revelation xvii. 12, 
13, 14. 



168 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 

become its grave ; but " in those days the God of 
heaven shall set up a kingdom, which shall never 
be destroyed." 

Thus will set in divided glory and gloom the Satur- 
day evening's sun of the present dispensation, briefly 
preceding the millennial dawn of the new Judaic 
dispensation, when Jerusalem shall at last dwell 
safely, at rest from her Gentile foes ; when " her 
light shall go forth as brightness, and the salvation 
thereof as a lamp that burneth," to all the families of 
the earth, with none to molest or make afraid in all 
God's holy mountain. 

Thus shall antichrist arise and prosper and prac- 
tice and pass away, and the groaning and travailing 
earth, now at last relieved, enter upon a Sabbath 
of peaceful and blessed rest, and satan be bound for 
a thousand years. 

Oh, how boundless a source of comfort and sup- 
port and repose the prospect of that millennial 
rest, with its earthly felicity and its heavenly min- 
istrations, to those destined to pass through the 
perilous scenes of that coming tribulation, the very 
threshold of which we are treading even now ! 
But, on the other side of that fiery flood, there is 
" a rest that remaineth to the people of God," where 
tears from all faces will be wiped away, and there 
will be no cross to bear. Earth hath no sorrow 
which that rest will not heal. 

" The views presented are sustained with great fuhics? of scriptural quo- 
tation, and although they are in some respects new to me, yet I am free 
to declare that they seem better to harmonize with the inspired oracles 
than any which have come under my ohserya.tion."— Bishop Hopkins, of 
Vermont, to the publishers. 




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